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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



ENGLISH \ ^ 



IN 



AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 



BY 

PROFESSORS IN THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENTS 

OF TWENTY REPRESENTATIVE 

INSTITUTIONS 



EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, 
BY ^ 

WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE 




BOSTON, U.S.A. 
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS 

1895 



i^ 






Copyright, 1895, 
By D, C. Heath & Co. 



Ttpogkaphy by C. J. Petebs & Son, Boston. 



Pbesswobk by S. J. Pabkhill & Co. 



PUBLISHER'S NOTE. 



With the exception of the articles upon Johns Hopkins 
University and the University of Minnesota, the contents of 
this volume are reprinted from The Dial, for which they 
were originally written, and in which they appeared during 
1894. They consist mainly of a series of twenty articles 
upon the teaching of English in as many American colleges 
and universities, prepared in each case by one of the leading 
department professors of the institution in question ; and 
of an appendix, which includes a few communications and 
discussions germane to the subject. The great interest 
aroused in educational circles by these articles has made 
it seem desirable to republish them in book form. The 
volume has been edited by Mr. William Morton Payne, of 
The Dial, whose editorial articles in that review have sup- 
plied the basis of the general introduction to the present 
work, and may be taken as representing the general atti- 
tude of The Dial towards the more prominent phases of 
the discussion. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Publishers' Note 3 

Contents . .^ 5 

Introduction 7 

The Editor of the Dial. 

The Teaching of English. 

1. Yale University 29 

Albert S. Cook. 

2. Columbia College .40 

Brander Matthewn. 

^ 3. Harvard University 44 

Barrett Wendell. 

4. The Leland Stanford, Junior, University ... 49 

Melville B. Anderson. 

5. Cornell University 60 

Hiram Corson. 

6. The University of Virginia 65 

Charles W. Kent. 

7. The University of Illinois 71 

Daniel Kilhani Dodge. 

8. Lafayette College 74 

F. A. March. 

9. The University of Iowa 83 

Edinard E. Hale, Jr. 

10. The University of Chicago 86 

Albert H. Tolman. 

5 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

11. The University of Indiana 92 

Martin W. Sampson. 

12. The University of California 99 

Charles Mills Gayley. 

13. Amherst College 110 

John F. Genung. 

14. The University of Michigan 116 

Fred N. Scott. 

15. The University of Nebraska 124 

L. A. Sherman. 

16. The University of Pennsylvania 130 

Felix F. Schelling. 

17. The University of Wisconsin 135 

David B. Frankenburger. 

18. Wellesley College 141 

Katharine Lee Bates. 

19. The Johns Hopkins University 149 

James W. Bright. 

20. The University of Minnesota 155 

George E. MacLean. 

APPENDIX. 

1. English in Southern Universities . . ... . . . 163 

John B. Henneman. 

2. English Literature in a French University . . . 167 

3. A Society of Comparative Literature 173 

Charles Mills Gayley. 

4. The Study of English Literature from the Stand- 

point of the Student 175 

Charles W. Hodell. 

5. Education and Literature 179 

Hiram M. Stanley. 



THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 



INTRODUCTION. 

The methods employed by our schools in the teaching of 
English literature have, for some years past, been in a tran- 
sition stage, exhibiting a strong tendency towards more en- 
lightened "ways of dealing with this vastly important subject. 
The fermentation is of the healthful type, and a fairly clari- 
fied product may not unreasonably be expected to result. 
When Matthew Arnold declared the future of poetry to be 
immense, he expressed a truth whose full significance may be 
realized only upon considerable reflection, and the assump- 
tion of a broadly philosophical standpoint from which to 
view the coming conquests of culture. The same idea was 
expressed, with something of humorous exaggeration, by 
the author of The New Republic, who attributed to John 
Stuart Mill the opinion that ''when all the greater evils of 
human life shall have been removed, the human race is to 
find its chief enjoyment in reading Wordsworth's poetry." 
To indicate the importance of a due appreciation of literature 
I hardly need, upon this occasion, to repeat the hackneyed 
quotations in praise of books, from Richard de Bury to Mr. 
Ruskin ; it may surely be taken for granted that, allowing 
Arnold's demand on behalf of conduct for a good three- 
fourths of our life, a considerable share of the remaining 
fraction may be claimed for literature. But if literature is 
to count for so much among our higher interests, the manner 

T 



8 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

in which we set about to prepare the way for it is surely of 
the utmost importance, and any misdirection of energy in this 
preparation means an almost incalciilable loss. 

An excellent educational method, much in vogue among 
the more progressive of modern teachers, is based upon the 
principle of proceeding from the near and the familiar to the 
strange and the remote. It is a method that may be pushed 
to extremes, but it is fundamentally sound. In geography, 
for example, a child starts with the schoolhouse, the village, 
and the surrounding country made familiar by his wander- 
ings, and afterwards extends to scenes unvisited the construc- 
tion thus begun. In history, the happenings of the day, as 
narrated in the newspapers and talked about at home, provide 
the starting-point. In seeking to arrive at a comprehension 
of the nature of government and the organization of society, 
his attention is first directed towards the town-meeting, which 
he has possibly seen at work ; towards the policeman or the 
constable, whom he has learned to recognize as the embodi- 
ment of executive authority before having learned the mean- 
ing of that term, or towards the tax-collector, about whose 
visits certain ominous associations have clustered, before the 
function of that persona non grata has been realized. 

Is there not in the method thus illustrated a suggestion 
worth putting to the uses of literature ? May not the young 
be led to a true perception of literary values by just this 
process of smoothing the ways that lead to a correct taste, 
this device of fitting the conscious achievement to the earlier 
unconscious one ? Those having occasion to observe young 
people on their way through the educational mill know that 
literary taste and a genuine delight in " the authors " are not 
common, that they are the exception rather than the rule. 
Yet most children have, in the earlier stages of their school 
life, some germ of literary appreciation that needs nothing 
more than careful nurture to be brought to flower in the later 



iNTKODtJCTION. 9 

stages. But when they come to the serious study of litera- 
ture in school and college, it presents itself to them as a part 
of the " grind " ; it must be pursued in a certain prescribed 
way, which is likely enough the wrong way ; it is treated as 
if it were geometry or linguistics, and the needs of the indi- 
vidual are lost sight of in the application of the system. 

It seems to me a fundamental principle that anything like 
rigidity in the methods employed for the teaching of litera- 
ture and the development of literary taste will necessarily 
prove fatal to success. In physics or in philology, the 
" course " is a perfectly rational device ; it is of the essence 
of training in such subjects that the work should be logical 
in its development. The path of least resistance is in them 
the same, or nearly the same, for all normally constituted 
minds. It is obviously the path to be followed, and the 
treatment of a class en bloc becomes not only possible but 
desirable. With literature the case is very different, and the 
path of least resistance must be discovered for each indi- 
vidual separately. The imagination is a wayward faculty, 
and atrophy is likely to follow upon the attempt abruptly to 
divert it into channels other than those it listeth to seek. 
The facts of literature may be apprehended by the intellect 
thus constrained, but that emotional accompaniment which 
makes of literature a personal message to the individual, 
which enshrines it, along with music and religion, in the 
most sacred recesses of the soul, is not to be coerced. Mere 
didactics are as powerless to impart the message of literature 
as they are to impart the message of music or of religion. 
The reward of such an attempt may be theology or counter- 
point, formal rhetoric or literary history ; but not that spir- 
itual glow which is the one thing worth the having, that 
kindling of the soul which comes, perhaps when least ex- 
pected, with the hearing of some ineffable strain, or the read- 
ing of some lightning-tipped verse. 



10 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

There are many, no doubt, poor in emotional endowment, 
and unresponsive to the finer spiritual vibrations aroused by 
the masterpieces of verbal art, to whom literature has hardly 
more meaning than nature had for the yokel of Wordsworth's 
hackneyed ballad. To one of this class, if he do not actually 
look npon Homer from the standpoint of Zoilus, or share in 
lago's view of the character of Othello, it is at least true that 
the last agony of Lear is nothing more than the death of an 
old man ; for him the solemn passing of (Edipus 

" To the dark benign deep underworld, alone " 

is only a sort of hocus-pocus ; and his ears are deaf to the 

" Sudden music of pure peace " 

wherewith the stars seal the successive divisions of Dante's 
threefold song. 

But even for such as these the case is not altogether hope- 
less. The appeal of literature to the human soul is so mani- 
fold that it must find in every nature some pipes ready to be 
played upon. Dull though the sense may seem, it is at some 
point waiting to be quickened. Por literature is life itself, in 
quintessential expression ; how then can it fail, in some of its 
many phases, to have both a meaning and a message for every 
human being ? The earliest responsive vibrations may be 
rudimentary in character, and combined in the simplest of 
harmonies. The heart may first be stirred by some bit of 
sentiment that would be accounted cheap by a refined taste ; 
the imagination may first be fired by some grotesque Marchen, 
or by some wildly improbable tale of romantic adventure. 
The ripest literary taste has such beginnings as these, and 
the surest appreciation of literature is built upon such a foun- 
dation. Between the child, made forgetful of his surround- 
ings by the spell of Robinson Crusoe or the Arabian Nights, 
and the man, finding spiritual refreshment in Cervantes 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

or Moliere, renewed strength in Milton, or solace from grief 
in Tennyson, there is no real break ; the delight of the child 
and the grave joy of the man are but different stages of the 
same growth, and the one is what makes possible the other. 
How far this development may go is a problem to be 
worked out for each individual separately ; and there are 
doubtless, in each case, distinct limitations. AVhat I have 
sought to emphasize is just this individual nature of the prob- 
lem, and the fact that regimentation offers no solution that 
can be accounted satisfactory. The approach to literature is, 
in our current educational systems, hedged about with so 
many thorny obstructions, that not a few young persons start 
bravely i;pon it only to fall by the way, disheartened at sight 
of the forbidding barriers erected by historical, linguistic, and 
metrical science, for the purpose of taking toll of all way- 
farers. Whatever the visefulness for discipline of such sub- 
jects, the spirit of literature is not to be acquired by making 
chronological tables, or tracing the genealogies of words, or 
working out the law of decreasing predication. We may even 
sympathize to some extent with those who so revolt from all 
such methods as to refuse literature any place in the educa- 
tional scheme. Turn the young person loose, they advise, in 
a well-stocked library, and let him develop his own tastes in 
his own way. He will make mistakes, they admit ; there will 
be false starts not quickly righted ; but there will be, in the 
long run, a wholesome development of taste, and a steady 
ascent to higher levels of appreciation. In any case, assimi- 
lation will not be forced, and conventional judgments will not 
be made to parade as personal convictions. This view has 
the one great merit of allowing full scope to individualism, 
but to admit that it speaks the last word would be to abandon 
altogether the position that educational theory is bound to 
maintain. That the young may profit by the guidance of the 
older and wiser is as true in literature as it i-s in any other of 



12 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

the great intellectual concerns. But the needs of the individ- 
ual must be recognized as they are not now recognized, if lit- 
erature is to play its proper part in education. Each case 
must be made the subject of a special diagnosis and a special 
prescription. We might apply to this problem the favorite 
formula of one of the schools of modern socialism — '' From 
every man according to his ability ; to every man according 
to his needs " — although it is curious to see a socialist pre- 
cept doing service in an individualist cause. 

While college and university English is the special sub- 
ject of the volume to which these pages serve as an intro- 
duction, it seems to me that the subject of elementary and 
secondary English cannot here be wholly ignored. The sub- 
ject of the teaching of English is a unity, however varied the 
details at its successive stages, and it is truer of this subject 
than of most that mistakes made in the earlier years are diffi- 
cult, if they are not impossible, of subsequent correction. 
The English Conference named by the famous Committee of 
Ten on Secondary Education soon came to realize these facts, 
and their report differed noticeably from those of the Confer- 
ences upon other subjects, by covering, not only the period of 
secondary education, but also the years that come before. 
The Report of that Conference, and the Harvard Report on 
Composition and Rhetoric, made public a year or so earlier, 
are responsible for much of the recent awakening of interest 
in the subject of English instruction. In fact, the Harvard 
Report may be said to have given to the reform movement its 
strongest impulse, and made a burning " question of the day " 
out of a matter previously little more than academic in its in- 
terest. The subject was made to reach a larger public than it 
had ever reached before, and this new and wider public was 
fairly startled out of its self-complacency by the exhibit made 
of the sort of English written by young men anjd women sup- 
posed to have enjoyed the best preparatory educational ad- 



rNTRODUCTION. 13 

vantages, and to be fitted for entrance into the oldest and 
most dignified of our colleges. The report was more than a 
discussion of the evils of bad training; it was an object-lesson 
of the most effective sort, for it printed many specimen papers 
litemtwi et verbatim, and was even cruel enough to facsimile 
some of them by photographic process. 

The seed of discontent having thus been sown broadcast, 
the field was in a measure prepared for the labors of the Eng- 
lish Conference named by the Committee of Ten ; and the Re- 
port of that Conference, made public early in 1894, has kept 
the question of English teaching as burning as ever, if, indeed, 
it has not fanned the flame into greater heat. Not only the 
educational periodicals, but also many published in the inter- 
ests of general culture, and even some of the newspapers — 
in their blundering way — have kept the subject before the 
public. Educational gatherings have devoted to it much of 
their attention, and it has been largely taken up by writers for 
the magazines. 

The Conference recommendations for the eight years of 
instruction in elementary English are substantially as follows : 
For the first two years, elementary story-telling and the de- 
scription of objects ; for the next four, the use of reading- 
books, the beginnings of written composition, and a certain 
amount of informal grammar ; for the last two years, formal 
grammar and reading of a distinctly literary sort. The 
" speller " is to be discarded altogether, and the " reader " 
after the sixth year. I wish, indeed, that the Conference had 
gone still farther in the latter case and rejected the " reader " 
altogether. There is little to be urged in its favor, although 
it has long been the main reliance of elementary education in 
English. The important principle seems to be that nothing 
but literature should be read at all, and the '^ readers " in cur- 
rent use certainly contain much matter that cannot by any 
courtesy be called literature. This criticism is altogether 



14 THE TEACHING OP ENGLISH. 

apart from the other defect of scrappiness, inherent in the 
plan of the typical reading-book. Even Mother Goose, as Mr. 
Horace Scudder has convincingly argued, is a sort of liter- 
ature, and there is no lack of other substitutes for the thin 
and innutritious pabulum of the graded (I was on the point of 
writing degraded) books called " readers " which enterprising 
publishers have forced upon several generations of over-com- 
placent school authorities. Moreover, the use of the " reader " 
generally means wearisome repetition of a limited amount of 
matter, whereas a rational educational method would demand 
very little repetition. The jaded interest with which a hapless 
child cons the familiar and well-thumbed pages is fatal to that 
appreciation of literature which it should be the first aim of 
primary education to encourage. Why, in these days of inex- 
pensive production of reading matter, should a child be forced 
to peruse the same pages over and over again until the very 
sight of the book is hateful to him ? Why should not every 
day bring to him fresh matter for the stimulation of his grow- 
ing intelligence and imagination ? 

As for the other point upon which I would insist, the read- 
ing of nothing that is not worth reading, there can be no pos- 
sible excuse for the kind of literary gruel that is too commonly 
fed, by spoonfuls, to the young. When we consider the pecu- 
liarly receptive quality of the child's mind, the retentiveness 
whose loss he will so soon have occasion to mourn, the imagi- 
nation so early to be dulled by the prosaic years to come, does 
it not seem a crime to make of these faculties or powers any- 
thing less than the utmost possible, to force the free spirit 
into ruts and waste it upon inanities ? Having at hand the 
ample literature which gives expression to the childhood of 
the race, the literature of myth and fable, of generous impulse 
moving to heroic deed, how can a teacher be justified in sub- 
stituting for this the manufactured and self-conscious twaddle 
that is the staple of most modern writing for children ? Even 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

for the very youngest who can read at all, there is no lack of 
suitable material. And when a more advanced stage has been 
reached, there is the whole world of fairy lore, the wealth 
of religious and secular story-telling, the inexhaustible fund 
of historical incident, all of which must be included in the 
outfit of the adult mind, and much of which is better acquired 
at an early age than at any other. The child who has grown 
up in ignorance of the labors of Hercules and Siegfried's 
fight with the dragon, of the wanderings of Ulysses and the 
deeds of King Arthur, of Horatius at the bridge and Leonidas 
at Thermopylae, has missed something that cannot be given 
him later, and may justly feel himself defrauded of a part, of 
his birthright. The sense of injury is only aggravated by 
finding the mind filled instead with lumber worse than useless, 
with recollections of the worthless stuff, only too well remem- 
bered, that in childhood usurped the place that should have 
been filled by literature carefully selected for the value of its 
form or of its subject-matter. 

In dealing with its subject proper — the subject of English 
in secondary schools — the Report of the Conference makes 
a number of highly important recommendations. To begin 
with, a demand is made for one-fourth of the time covered by 
the years of secondary education. Of this share literature 
proper should get rather more than half, the rest being given 
to composition, rhetoric, and grammar of the historical or 
systematic sort. The demand for a full fourth of the secon- 
dary school period does not seem to me excessive, and other 
reforms may well wait until the justice of this claim becomes 
generally admitted. Given such a recognition of the impor- 
tance of secondary English, the accomplishment of its educa- 
tional purpose must follow from insistence upon a few simple 
and well-understood principles rather than from any new 
devices or startling innovations of method. The Report 
rightly emphasizes the fundamental importance of requiring 



16 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

good English in all school work, whether written or oral. As 
long as slovenly composition is allowed to pass uncensured in 
mathematical or natural science exercises, as long as slovenly 
speech is tolerated in class translations from foreign lan- 
guages, the case remains hopeless. This is the root of the 
matter, and other reforms are of minor importance. Theme- 
writing in the English classes is useful, but written exercises 
in all the classes must be treated as themes, and bad English 
in a mathematical paper must count against it no less than bad 
logic. Teachers should also avail themselves to the utmost 
of the invaluable comparative advantages offered by the study 
of whatever ancient or modern languages are being pursued at 
the same time by the English student. The Conference was 
wholly right in asserting that " the best results in the teach- 
ing of English in high schools cannot be secured without the 
aid given by the study of some other language." 

In secondary education, the old-fashioned treatment of 
English literature found its embodiment in a historical text- 
book, to be learned mostly by heart, accompanied sometimes 
by a hand-book of '' extracts," in which each representative 
writer received an allotment of two or three pages. Some- 
times the history and the " extracts " were jumbled together, 
to the still further abridgment of the latter. The better 
modern method, which has gained much ground of late, con- 
centrates the attention upon a few longer works and their 
writers. This method is doubtless an advance upon the 
other, yet it sometimes means a reaction carried to extremes. 
We cannot afford to eliminate the historical text-book alto- 
gether, but we do need to have the right kind of book and to 
use it with intelligence. For the book that gives cut-and- 
dried critical formulas — a too prevalent type — the educator 
can have no use. What he wants is a book that shall stimu- 
late the critical faculty in the student, not suppress it by 
supplying criticism ready-made. To direct, but not to force, 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

opinion, and to encourage the widest range of independent 
reading, should be the aims of secondary instruction in liter- 
ature. As for the bare facts — dates, historical conditions, 
and the like — they must be learned as facts, but they are 
not all as lifeless as many students think them, and a judi- 
cious and sympathetic instructor will succeed in clothing 
many of them with such associations as to make their reten- 
tion a easy matter. 

The greater part of the English literature work done in 
secondary schools ought, of course, to consist in reading as 
many whole pieces of literature as it is possible to crowd into 
the time allotted. Since no two classes can be alike, and no 
two teachers ought to be alike, there is no greater mistake 
than the arrangement of a Procrustean course, to be followed 
by all, and repeated year after year. Whether the anniial 
divisions of the high-school work be based upon literary 
periods or literary forms, or graded according to difficulty of 
subject-matter, there should be within each year's work an 
almost unbounded latitude for the display of the instructor's 
individuality. He should be free to read as much as he 
chooses, and what he chooses, and in whatever way he 
chooses. To impose rigid methods upon the secondary 
teacher, or to select for him the texts which he shall study 
with his classes, is an act of sheer and utterly unjustifiable 
arrogance. 

To sum up, I am inclined to think that the problem of 
secondary education in English reduces itself to getting 
teachers who know good literature and care for it, and mini- 
mizing to the utmost the restrictions placed upon their work. 
Duplication of work in different years must be avoided, but 
beyond the limitations set with this object in view there 
should be no effort made to secure uniformity, both because 
every attempt to secure it costs something in vitality, and be- 
cause there is no good reason for uniformity anyway. These 



18 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

suggestions doubtless seem tame in comparison with the 
brilliant new departures here and there noisily heralded, but 
radical reconstructions appear to me no less suspicious in the 
body educational than in the body politic. It will be time to 
seek for the ^' new thing " when we have done all that is pos- 
sible with the old. 

Coming now to the subject of college and university Eng- 
lish, with which the present volume is chiefly concerned, it 
may be said that the recent reaction from the formal and 
dispiriting methods of the past is very pronounced, and that 
the study of the English language and literature appears to 
be in a state of healthful activity. Mr. Churton Collins, writ- 
ing six or seven years ago upon the subject of the instruction 
in English in the higher schools and universities of England, 
complained that '^ it attains none of the ends which a subject 
in itself so full of attraction and interest might be expected 
to attain. It fails to fertilize ; it fails to inform ; it fails 
even to awaken curiosity." This triple failure he ascribed to 
the fact that literature " has been regarded not as the expres- 
sion of art and genius, but as mere material for the stud}^ of 
words, as mere pabulum for philology." Again, the whole 
machinery of higher education in England is subordinated to 
the interests of examiners, and its final product is the suc- 
cessful examinee, the man who is found equal to the Civil 
Service tests, the classman of the Tripos. Even so sound a 
thinker as Professor Goldwin Smith has recently doubted the 
success of the new Oxford school of English literature, on the 
ground that the subject does not easily lend itself to the tra- 
ditional sort of examination. Emerson, many years ago, out- 
lined the New History in the phrase : " Broader and deeper 
we must write our annals." Similarly, we may say to such 
cavillers as Professor Smith : '' Broader and deeper must we 
make our examination papers." The subject of English liter- 
ature has far too high an educational value to be neglected 



INTRODUCTION. 19 

merely because it requires some adaptation or reconstruction 
of a few time-honored methods and adjuncts of teaching. 

The criticisms of Mr. Collins apply, of course, mutatis 
7}iutandis, very largely to the American conditions of not 
many years ago. It may be said, indeed, that the temptation 
is still strong with us to regard works of literature as mate- 
rial for minute philological and historical analysis, and that 
this procedure finds a certain warrant in the marked success 
which everywhere attends it. But the real question is 
whether the success thus obtained is of the sort to be desired. 
Does it not mean the intrusion of science upon a domain set 
apart for other, if not higher, purposes ? It is doubtless 
much easier to treat literature by the method of science than 
by the method of aesthetics ; but does not literature, thus 
treated, cease to assert its peculiar and indispensable func- 
tion ? Perhaps it may be just as well, as the late Edward T. 
McLaughlin suggested, to defer '' laboratory work " in litera- 
ture " until scientists introduce literary methods into the 
laboratory." The effects of this " mechanical and harshly 
intellectualized study " are not unfairly described by that 
writer in the following passage : '' If the literary neophyte's 
attention is directed too largely toward facts, he ma}^ mistake 
the means for the end, and as a result of his training find the 
principal object that confronts him as he takes up new works, 
nothing spiritual and aesthetic, but only the task of obtaining 
exterior information, hunting down quotations, dates, and 
allusions, surveying a poem by the rod and line of a technical 
phraseology, detecting parallels, and baying at the holes of 
conjectural originals, finally to emerge from his studies 
learned, but not literary." It seems to me that our colleges 
should no longer permit this sort of work to masquerade as 
the study of literature, but should relegate it to the depart- 
ment of science, where it properly belongs. But some of our 
college calendars, upon compliance with this demand, would 



20 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

be almost denuded of literary courses, which, in turn, might 
result in the much-needed provision for the study of literature 
in the true sense. It is no easy matter to disentangle the 
study of literature, thus conceived, from the meshes that 
philological and historical science have woven about it, but a 
few men have been successful in the work, and their example 
is there for the rest to follow. Men of this class, more than 
of any other, are needed by our colleges to-day ; and in secur- 
ing such men, giving free scope to their activity, and recogniz- 
ing the claims of their work as no less serious than the claims 
of work in any other department, the colleges will do litera- 
ture the best service in their power. 

The series of articles which are now published go far to 
show that the objections raised by such men as Professor 
Goldwin Smith and the late Professor Preeman are nothing 
more than bugbears. If American experience (as recorded in 
these articles) counts for anything, it must be admitted to 
establish beyond question the claims of English as a proper 
subject of university instruction. Does it fail to fertilize, to 
inform, to awaken curiosity ? Let \is see what a few of our 
educators think about it. Says Professor Cook : " The Avriter 
might formulate the especial object which he proposes to 
himself as the development in the student, whether graduate 
or undergraduate, of insight and power, and indeed he con- 
ceives this to be the end of all education whatever. The 
imparting of information seems to him quite a secondary 
object ; and a love for literature is most likely, as he thinks, 
to be promoted by the acquisition of insight and power." Says 
Professor Corson : " It is considered of prime importance that 
students should first attain to a sympathetic appreciation of 
what is essential and intrinsic, before the adventitious fea- 
tures of literature — features due to time and place — be 
considered." Professor Dodge, speaking of the study of 
Shakespeare, says that grammatical criticism is treated spar- 



INTllODUCTION. 21 

ingly, and textual criticism even more so. He then adds : 
" The results of this method of Shakespeare study have been 
very encouraging, many of the pupils seeming to develope 
from it a real love for the subject." Professor March writes 
that the courses under his direction are constant to the 
central idea of this passage quoted from Arnold of Rugby : 
" What a treat it would be to teach Shakespeare to a good 
class of young Greeks in regenerate Athens ; to dwell upon 
him line by line and word by word, and so get all his pictures 
and thoughts leisurely into one's mind, till I verily think 
one would, after a time, almost give out light in the dark, 
after having been steeped, as it were, in such an atmosphere 
of brilliance." Professor Sampson considers the fundamen- 
tal aim of the work to be " The study of literature, not 
of biography nor- of literary history, not of grammar, not of 
etymology, not of anything but the works themselves, viewed 
as their creators wrote them, viewed as art, as transcripts of 
humanity, — not as logic, not as psychology, not as ethics." 
And Professor Tolman thus sums up his conclusions : " Liter- 
ary masterpieces should be studied chiefly, it seems to me, 
for their beauty. It is because of their charm, their beauty, 
that they have immortality ; it is only because of this that 
we study them at all." 

These remarks, which might be multiplied indefinitely, 
seem to me fairly typical of the spirit in which the subject of 
English literature is studied in our colleges and universities. 
Avoiding the dangerous extremes of pedantry on the one 
hand and dilettantism on the other, our teachers of literature 
seem to be animated by the desire to impart the spirit of 
literary appreciation no less than the methods of exact 
scholarship in literary investigation. The large proportion 
of students taking English courses is almost everywhere 
noticeable, and there is little evidence that these courses are 
elected because they are "soft." Thei'e is a recent and grow- 



22 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

ing tendency to base the doctor's degree upon English as a 
principal subject, and to encourage publication of the theses 
offered. Inspection of a number of such theses that have 
come to my notice during the past two years shows them to 
compare more than favorably with the similar work done in 
English at the German universities. In this American work, 
aesthetic and philosophical criticism has its full share, and its 
recognition is not to the detriment of rigorous training or 
sound scholarship. 

The series of reports upon the teaching of English to 
which attention is now directed have been contributed in every 
case by some one" closely identified with the English depart- 
ment of the institution concerned, and in the majority of 
cases by the head of the department. They provide the most 
elaborate comparative showing ever made of the methods pur- 
sued in this important branch of the higher instruction. 
There are twenty articles altogether, representing as many 
centres of light and leading; and while the showing might 
have been extended to many more institutions without abate- 
ment of interest, enough facts have been furnished to provide 
a safe basis for generalization, and to illustrate every impor- 
tant phase of the teaching of English as it is now understood 
by those among us who are foremost in its profession. 

The colleges and universities represented in this series fall 
into certain natural groups which it may be well to indicate. 
First of all, we have such venerable Eastern institutions as 
Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylva- 
nia. With these we may group Amherst and Lafayette, 
standing for the class of small colleges to which American 
education owes a debt far from measurable by their size, and 
the University of Virginia, representing the earlier type of 
Southern education so well justified of its children during the 
long ante-helium period. A second and fairly compact group 
is formed of the state-supported institutions of the New 



INTRODUCTION. 23 

West — the Universities of Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Wis- 
consin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, and California. The third 
and last group includes those later foundations of private 
philanthropy which, with their suddenly acquired wealth and 
mushroom-like rate of development, already threaten to over- 
shadow the ancient fame of the New England institutions. 
To this category belong Cornell and Stanford Universities, 
Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Chicago. 
Here we may also include, as representing both the new phi- 
lanthropy and the new spirit that does not seek to exclude 
woman from the benefits of the higher culture, Wellesley Col- 
lege, to which attention is called in one of the most interest- 
ing reports of the series. 

Although this grouping is but one of several that might be 
chosen, it seems, on the whole, the most natural and the most 
suggestive. It very nearly amounts to a geographical grouping 
of the East and the West, or to a chronological grouping of 
the old and the new. And perhaps the first idea suggested by 
this antithesis of East and West, of old and new, is that the 
former class stands for a conservative adherence to well-tried 
methods and aims, while the latter class stands for experiment, 
fertility of invention, and the broadening of standards. Cer- 
tainly, the new ideas and the novel methods reported come 
rather from the West than the East, rather from the youthful 
than from the ancient foundations. It is undoubtedly true 
that the newer communities of the West supply the educator 
with a cruder material than comes into the hands of a New 
England faculty, and possibly this is the very thing that 
stimulates him to new departures and novel activities. It 
makes a vast difference whether the average student comes 
from a home in which books are among the most essential of 
furnishings and from a family in which culture is a traditional 
inheritance, or from the environment of the pioneer settle- 
ment, which has not yet forgotten or outlived the hard 



24 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

struggle for subsistence and a foothold. And, while I am 
not disposed to say that the new universities are doing more 
than the old ones for the study of our common speech and 
literary inheritance, I cannot refrain from commendation of 
the alertness, the keenness of scent, and the adaptability with 
which they are shaping their work to their special conditions. 

Viewing this collection of reports as a whole, it is clear 
that they supply the material for a considerable number of 
fairly trustworthy inductions. A few of these I will en- 
deavor briefly to set forth. The statistics given to show the 
numbers of students pursuing English courses at the respec- 
tive colleges show that these courses are nearly everywhere 
very popular. They run the classical courses closely, and in 
some cases seem to attract a larger number of students, al- 
though the figures are lacking for any exact comparative 
statement on this subject. In a recent review article Profes- 
sor Woodrow Wilson contends that the twin bases of the new 
liberal education ought to be the study of literature and the 
study of institutions. As far as the study of literature is 
concerned, it would seem that the contention is already justi- 
fied, or nearly so, by the fact. The thousand odd students at 
Yale (and Sheffield), at Harvard, at the Universities of Mich- 
igan, and even of Nebraska, give eloquent testimony to the 
popularity of English teaching, to say nothing of the eight 
hundred and seventy-three reported by California, the six 
hundred and twenty-nine by Chicago, and the four hundred 
and fifty by Stanford. Equally eloquent, from another point 
of view, are such English faculties as that of Harvard, with 
twenty men, and of Chicago, with fifteen. Courses are re- 
ported in so many different ways that comparison is not easy ; 
but Chicago, with upwards of sixty hours a week, sterns to 
head the list, while Harvard, Stanford, and California are not 
far behind. 

The important subject of entrance requirements is not dis- 



INTRODUCTION. 25 

cussed in the majority of our reports, but the few allusions 
made to it are of the greatest interest. During the past 
year, Yale has for the first time required an entrance qualifi- 
cation in English. From Pennsylvania comes the vague re- 
port that " English literature " is required for entrance. As 
we go West, we do better and better. Indiana has relegated 
the bugbear of <' Freshman English" to the preparatory 
schools, and Nebraska has accomplished a similar reform. 
The most interesting reports upon this subject come from the 
Pacific Coast. The University of California requires ^' a 
high-school course of at least three years, at the rate of five 
hours a week ; and it advocates, and from some schools se- 
cures, a four years' course." This requirement is further 
said to be fifty per cent more extensive and stringent than 
that made by the New England Association of Colleges. 
Stanford University started out with what was substantially 
the New England requirement, but has since raised that stand- 
ard upon the side of composition. " This year," it is said, 
" we have absolutely refused to admit to our courses students 
unprepared to do real collegiate work. The Freshman En- 
glish course in theme-writing has been eliminated from our 
programme, and has been turned over to approved teachers, 
and to the various secondary schools. Had this salutary in- 
novation not been accomplished, all the literary courses would 
have been swept away by the rapidly growing inundation of 
Freshman themes, and all our strength and courage would 
have been dissipated in preparing our students to do respect- 
able work at more happily equipped universities." 

The study of these reports shows the existence, in most of 
our colleges, of a well-marked differentiation of literature from 
linguistics. In many of the cases, indeed, there is an equally 
distinct differentiation of rhetoric from the other two depart- 
ments. If this introduction has dwelt more fully upon the 
aesthetic than upon the linguistic side of English training, 



26 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

there lias been no intention of ignoring the importance of the 
latter aspect. The linguistic part of the field is in no danger 
of careless cultivation, and has little need of fertilizers. The 
methods of linguistic study have been so thoroughly formu- 
lated and systematized by workers in the classical languages, 
that they may be transferred with slight modification to the 
subject of the English or any other modern tongue. But there 
is still something resembling anarchy in our treatment of Eng- 
lish from the side of aesthetic criticism, as well as from that 
of history or of philosophy. Hence it is necessary to direct 
the attention mainly to these aspects. It seems to be of the 
first importance that the two grand divisions of the subject 
should be sharply differentiated. One need have no quarrel 
with either the science of linguistics or the art of rhetoric to 
be persuaded that neither of the two should be permitted to 
masquerade as the study of literature. It is gratifying to find 
that the distinction is both made and observed in nearly all of 
the institutions under consideration. " Mere literature" seems 
to have its full share of attention and teaching strength; it 
appears to be cordially recognized as a true university subject, 
with its own methods and aims, and with its own tests of the 
culture which it has to impart. That university teaching in 
literature may be made something more than the '' chatter 
about Shelley " which one of its most famous opponents de- 
lighted to call it, should be sufficiently evident from a careful 
study of these twenty reports. The question may be raised 
whether it would not be well to set an official seal upon the 
separation of literature from its allied subjects by making of 
it a separate department of university work, just as some of 
our more progressive institutions have erected sociology into 
a distinct department, thus definitely marking it off from the 
allied departments of political and economic science. The 
English scholars in our universities are, almost without excep- 
tion, either literary critics or masters of linguistic science; 



INTRODUCTION. 27 

they are rarely, if ever, both at once. Now this means that a 
department of English having a single head will almost inev- 
itably become developed upon one side at the expense of the 
other. Such of our institutions as Columbia College, Cornell 
University, and Stanford University have clearly recognized 
this difficulty, and have kept English linguistics distinct from 
English literature. 

Assuming this differentiation, what should be the qual- 
ifications of a professor of English literature proper? His 
function, to quote from Mr. Collins once more, " is the inter- 
pretation of power and beauty as they reveal themselves in 
language, not simply by resolving them into their constituent 
elements, but by considering them in their relation to princi- 
ples." To perform this function it is evident that he must 
have a thorough training in the history of criticism, from 
Aristotle to Pater; that he must have a wide acquaintance 
with literature, ancient and modern, native and foreign ; that 
he must have a delicately attuned ear and a cultivated aesthetic 
sense ; that, finally, he must have in an unusual degree the 
power of giving literary expression to his thought, and some- 
thing like a passion for bringing other minds into sympathetic 
communion with his own. He should be, in a word, as nearly 
as possible such a man as Arnold, or Lowell, or Sainte-Beuve, 
among the dead, or as M. Brunetiere, or Mr. Watts, or Mr. 
Stedman, among the living. Men of this type, or approaching 
this type, some of our universities already have ; the others 
may obtain them if they will but enlarge their horizon suffi- 
ciently to recognize the fact that for the work of giving vital 
instruction in English literature other than merely academic 
qualifications are needed ; that such qualifications are, indeed, 
of but secondary importance. 

Space fails me in which to discuss the many remaining 
subjects of interest offered by a comparative examination of 
these reports. I should like to speak of the growing impor- 



28 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

tance of graduate work in Englisli, of the tendency to give a 
larger place to Seminar investigation, of the historical aspect 
of literary study, of the extent to which American literature 
should receive special treatment, of the importance of intro- 
ducing courses which bring into comparison the literatures of 
culture, of the inexhaustible subject of special methods of in- 
struction, and the equally inexhaustible subject of the general 
aims to be kept in view by the teacher of literature. But 
such discussion must await another occasion. My closing 
word shall be one of gratification at the admirable variety, 
vitality, and individuality of the presentment as a whole. 
Whatever may be the shortcomings of our present higher in- 
struction in English, it has not fallen into the stagnation of a 
pedantic routine. It is alert, progressive, and eager in its 
outlook for higher things than have as yet been attained, 
however far it may still be from the fulfilment of its whole 
ambition. 

W. M. P. 



ENGLISH AT YALE UNIVERSITY. 

PUOFESSOR ALBERT S. COOK. 

According to the Catalogue, Yale College, or the Aca- 
demical Department of Yale University, has this year 1150 
students. There are five men to do the work in English — ■ 
two full professors, Professor Henry A. Beers and myself, 
and three instructors. Dr. W. L. Phelps, Mr. H. A. Smith, 
and Dr A. W. Colton. Nineteen hours a week of English are 
offered, a one-hour course (virtually) to Freshmen, a three- 
hour course to Sophomores, one two-hour course and one one- 
hour course to Juniors, three two-hour courses to Seniors, and 
three two-hour courses to Juniors and Seniors alike. Elimi- 
nating duplicates, 922 men are receiving English instruction, 
being rather more than four-fifths of the number of students 
in the College. Of these 331 are Freshmen ; 292 — practi- 
cally the whole class — are Sophomores ; the rest are Juniors 
and Seniors, the proportion being 179 Juniors to 120 Seniors. 
Of the Jvmiors, 44 take four or more hours of English ; of the 
Seniors, 18 take four or more hours, and 9 as many as six, or 
more. The present year is the first that an entrance exami- 
nation in English has been required since the modern methods 
of teaching preparatory English have come into effect, and 
measures have now been taken to conform to the recent rec- 
ommendations of the Commission of Colleges in New England. 
All the Junior and Senior work is elective ; the Sophomores 
choose five out of six prescribed subjects, these being Greek, 
Latin, modern languages, mathematics, English literature, 
and physics. All but three Sophomores elect English this 
year. 

29 



30 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

In the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University 
there are 612 undergraduates, distributed into three classes — 
Freshman, Junior, and Senior. For this number two English 
teachers are provided — a full professor. Professor Thomas 
E,. Lounsbury, and an instructor. Dr. H. P. Cross. Seven 
hours of work in English are given, distributed as follows : 
for Freshmen, a required course of two hours per week during 
the first term (one-third of the academic year) ; for Juniors, 
a required course of one hour during the second term, and an 
elective course of two hours during the first term, and three 
hours during the rest of the year; for Seniors, an elective 
course of three hours. The Freshman course is given to 250 
men, the Junior required course to 199, the Junior elective 
course to 57, and the Senior elective course to 50 men. In 
respect to the entrance examination in English, the require- 
ments are nearly the same as in the Academical Department, 
and it is intended that the agreement shall be still closer in 
future. 

The Freshman and Sophomore courses in Yale College are 
outlined as follows : • — 

The required study of English literature occupies three hours a 
week through one-third of Freshman year. This work has two objects 
in view: (1) to give the student an elementary knowledge of the history 
of English literature, so that he may be able to take more advanced 
courses or do general reading intelligently, the means employed being 
recitations from Mr. Brooke's Primer of English Literature ; (2) to make 
every student intimately acquainted with a part of the works of the 
greatest English writers, by forming the habit of reading them critically 
and with a thorough understanding of every sentence ; this end is 
sought to be attained by class-room discussion of three representative 
plays of Shakespeare, attention being paid to the close interpretation of 
the text, the development of plot, analysis of character, and general 
aesthetic criticism. 

In Sophomore year the following authors are read : Spenser, Shake- 
speare, Bacon, Milton, Addison, Swift, Pope, Johnson, Goldsmith, and 
Gray. The study is both historical and critical, giving the student an 



ENGLISH AT YALE UNIVERSITY. 31 

idea of the general development and course of English literature, while, 
at the same time, aiming to establish sound principles of criticism and 
secure a better appreciation of literature as an art. Practice in compo- 
sition work is afforded by the preparation of three papers in the year, 
on subjects connected with the work of the course. 

The Junior and Senior elective courses in Yale College 
are the following : — 

Professor Beers : — 

Georgian Literature of the XIX''' Century. 

Juniors. 2 hrs. both terms. 

Critical readings in the class-room in the verse and prose of 
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, DeQuincey, Lamb, Shelley, 
and Keats. 

Literatiire of the Early Stuart arid Commomvealth Period. 

Seniors. 2 hrs. both terms. 

The literary history of the generation of 1625-1660 (excluding 
the drama), with special reference to the development of prose, 
to the lyrical verse of the Church poets and the Cavaliers, and to 
the writings of Milton in English and Latin. 

English Bomanticism. Seniors. 2 hrs. both terms. 

The history of English Komanticism from Thomson to Swin- 
burne (1726-1890), with incidental study of parallel movements in 
Germany and France. Instruction is given mainly by lectures, and 
frequent written examinations are held on the reading assigned. 

Professor Cook : — 

English Political Orators. 2 hrs. 1st term. 

Study of English Parliamentary orators of the eighteenth and 
nineteentli centuries, particularly of Burke. Comparison of 
English with American political orators. 

American Literature. 2 hrs. 2d term. 

Study of selected authors, such as Emerson, Hawthorne, and 
Lowell, with outside reading in authors or works not undertaken 
in class. 



32 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

Bacon. 2 hrs. 1st term. 

Bacon's Essays and Advanceinent of Learning. Stndy through 
paraphrase and amplification. Bacon's character, opinions, and 
style. His place in Elizabethan literature. Frequent prepara- 
tion of brief papers on assigned topics. 

Brown inr/. 2 hrs. 2d. term. 

Critical study of selected poems. Browning's theory of life, 
literary art, and place among the poets of this century. Compara- 
tive readings in other authors, and frequent preparation of brief 
papers on assigned topics. 

Old and Middle English. 2 lirs. both terms. 

An elementary course in the beginnings and earlier develop- 
ment of the English language and literature. The first term will 
be devoted to Cook's First Book in Old English. In the second 
term this will be followed by more difficult Old English texts, and 
by the reading of selections from Chaucer and other Middle Eng- 
lish writers for linguistic purposes. 

Dr. Phelps : — 

The Elizabethan Drama. 

Seniors. 2 hrs. both terms. 
A purely literary course in the English Drama, from the Mys- 
tery Plays to the closing of the theatre in 1642. The pre-Eliza- 
bethan period will be read and discussed only in the most cursory 
fashion, the object being to get merely a historical background. 
Some plays of all the principal dramatists from 1580 to 1640, ex- 
cept Shakespeare, will be read: Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Dekker, 
Chapman, Heywood, Middleton, Beaumont and Fletcher, Web- 
ster, Ford, Massinger, and Shirley. The course will require from 
every student a large amount of reading. Although intended 
primarily for Seniors and graduates, a limited number of Juniors 
will be admitted, the previous consent of the instructor being 
necessary. 

Mr. Smith : — 

English Composition. Seniors. 1 hr. both terms. 

Course 114 is intended primarily to give practice in composi- 
tion. For this purpose a theme of not over 150 words will be 



ENGLISH AT YALE UNIVEKSITY. 33 

required, for the first term at least, five times a week from each 
member of the class. A weekly class-room exercise will be occu- 
pied with discussion and criticism of specimen themes, and with 
instruction in some of the principles of composition. The in- 
structor will also meet the members of the class individually for 
conference about once a month. The methods of the course may 
be varied from time to time at the discretion of the instructor, and 
will require of the class a considerable amount of outside work. 

Of these, and the corresponding courses offered every 
alternate year, the Catalogue offers the subjoined explana- 
tions : — 

The strictly elective work in English (the Sophomores elect five out 
of six subjects) follows four different, though related,, lines. Instruction 
is offered in the history of the literature as a whole; in the earlier stages 
of the language, with reference as well to the reading of the older liter- 
ature as to linguistic discipline; in composition; and in the study of 
various periods, tendencies, classes of writers, and individual authors. 

The course in the history of English literature is meant to deepen 
and extend the instruction in that subject received in the earlier years. 

The course in Old and Middle English is intended to impart a gen- 
eral view of the history of the language, and the elementary knowledge 
essential to the reading of pre-Chaucerian authors, as well as to the 
fuller understanding of Chaucer himself; this course is especially rec- 
ommended to all those who look forward to the teaching of English, 
whether in college or secondary school. 

The course in composition affords opportunity for practice in the 
preparation of daily themes, and for the broader, as well as the minuter, 
criticism of them by the instructor. Besides this special class in com- 
position, many of the courses in literature provide opportunities for the 
preparation of papers on topics that are naturally suggested, and for 
the oral discussion of them. The DeForest, Townsend, TenEyck, 
Betts, and McLaughlin prizes are under the superintendence of the 
instructors in English, and constitute a stimulus to sound and creditable 
work in composition. 

The chief periods of English literature, with reference to which 
instruction is at present provided, are: (1) the Early Stuart and Com- 
monwealth period; (2) the Georgian period; (3) the Victorian period; 
(4) that covered by American literature, especially of the present cen- 
tuiy. The chief tendency discussed is that indicated by the term Ro- 



34 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

manticism. The chief classes of writers examined are the Elizabethan 
dramatists, the essayists, and the political orators of the last and the 
present centuries. The chief individual authors studied are Shake- 
speare, in two different courses, pursuing two somewhat different 
objects; Bacon; Browning; and Tennyson. 

The larger number of the courses in English are intended to be dis- 
ciplinary, as well as instructive: in other words, they have in view the 
development of insight and power no less than the conveyance of in- 
formation. 

Autiioritative statements concerning the courses of tlie 
Sheffield Scientific School are as follows : — 

English. — The course is designed to give the student acquaintance 
with the great re^jresentative writers of the various epochs. A history 
of the language is one of the studies of the Freshman year; and after 
that year the study of the language is made entirely subordinate to that 
of the literature. During the first term of Junior year, however, ex- 
tracts from Early English authors are read, and Early English grammar 
is studied, so as to familiarize the student with the inflections then in 
use and the distinctions existing between the leading dialects. It is the 
aim of this term's work to give such knowledge of forms, and to some 
extent of words, that the student will be able to read at sight any Early 
English author whose writings do not involve special difficulties of 
language or vocabulary. 

With the second term, the regular study of English literature proper 
begins with Chaucer; and for the rest of the course till the end of 
Senior year the following authors are read: Bacon, Shakespeare, Mil- 
ton, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Goldsmith, and later writers. Those men- 
tioned in the list are always studied, but other authors not named are 
also taken up, the course varying somewhat in different years. In all 
cases, complete works of a writer are studied, not extracts; as, for in- 
stance, several of Chaucer's Tales, and several of the plays of Shake- 
speare. The authors are taken up in chronological order, and the 
literary history of the time is likewise carried on in connection with the 
great representative writers of each period. 

English Composition. — This course, required of the entire Ju- 
nior class, consists of weekly exercises based on selections from the writ- 
ings of well-known authors, such as Irving, De Quincey, and Macaulay. 
While it intends in the first place to give freedom of expression and the 
correction of the most obvious faults by practice in writing rapidly the 



ENGLISH AT YALE UNIVERSITY. 35 

substance of a passage previously assigned, it also aims to direct the at- 
tention of the student to qualities of style and methods of composition, 
to arouse his appreciative interest in the works as literature, and to 
improve the quality of his writing by Improving the quality of his 
thought. To this end occasional discussions of the selections read will 
occupy a i^art of the weekly hour. 

The courses of graduate instruction are given under the 
direction of the Philosopliical Faculty, which is distinct from 
that of Yale College or of the Shefl&eld Scientific School, 
though naturally including the principal instructors in both. 
Tlie courses in English are these, besides the undergraduate 
courses, which are offered to graduates also, in some cases 
with moi. 3 extended work to fit their needs: — 

Professor Lounsbury : — 

Tlie EiKjUsli Literature of the XI V"" Century. 

Professor Beers : — 

The Restoration and the Classical Age (1660-1H5). 

The course is intended only for graduate students, who meet 
for instruction once a week to discuss and report upon assigned 
portions of the writings of Dryden, Etherege, Wycherley, Van- 
brugh, Farquhar, Congreve, Buckingham, Milton, Bunyan, But- 
ler, Otway, Cowley, Swift, Prior, Addison, Pope, Steele, Parnell, 
Gay, DeFoe, etc. Diaries, memoirs, and histories of the period 
are also in part examined. 

Professor Cook : — 

[The strictly graduate courses offered below are given according to circum- 
stances and the needs of the graduate students actually in attendance ; but special 
attention is given to the suiiervision of individual research along these and similar 
lines.] 

Theories of Poetry. 2 hrs. 2d term. 

A course in the theories of poetry in general, and in the princi- 
ples of criticism applicable to its various departments, as the epic, 
dramatic, and lyric. Discussions and papers on the basis of 



36 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

standard works, such as Aristotle's Poetics, Sidney's Defense of 
Poesy, Addison's Criticisms on Paradise Lost, Boileau's Art 
of Poetry, Lessing's Laokoon, and others of similar character. 

Old English Poetry. 1 hr. 1st term. 

The texts used are Judith (Cook's edition), Elene (Kent's edi- 
tion), and The Battle of Maldon (Sweet's Reader). These are 
read, their place in the literature examined, and questions of 
authorship, date, and textual criticism discussed. TenBrink's 
and Wiilcker's Histories of Old English Literature are constantly- 
used for reference. 

Old English Grammar. 1 hr. 2d. term. 

An exhaustive grammatical examination of some prose text is 
made, on the basis of Cook's Phonological Investigation of Old 
English and edition of Sievers' Grammar for Phonology, of the 
latter for Inflection, and of March's Grammar for Syntax. 

Historical English Prosody. 1 hr. 1st term. 

Schipper's Englische Metrilc is adopted as the basis of study, 
but reference is made to the discrepant views of other authorities. 

Middle, English Grammar. 1 hr. 2d term. 

An outline of Middle English phonology and inflection is given 
by means of lectures, and the knowledge thus gained is applied in 
a grammatical study of Chaucer, on the basis of TenBrink's 
Chaucefs Sprache und Verskunst. 

Seminary in Ben Jonson. 

A study of the language, versification, sources, dramatic art, 
and influence of Ben Jonson. 

An English Club, organized in January of this year, and 
composed of teachers and graduate students, with the writer 
as chairman, holds meetings every alternate Monday evening 
for the reading and discussion of papers relating to methods 
of teaching and studying English. Some of the topics pre- 
sented have been : Mr. Churton Collins's Study of English 
Literature, English at Oxford University, Professor Corson's 



ENGLISH AT YALE UNIVERSITY. 37 

Aim of Literary Study, Professor Laurie's Lectures on Lan- 
guage, The Function of Mythology in the Teaching of 
Elementary English, Structural Beauties of the Odyssey, 
etc. There is also a Modern Language Club, formed of 
instructors and students in the Departments of English, 
Romance Languages, and German, which holds its regular 
meetings on the second Saturday evening of each month, for 
the reading and discussion of original papers, and for reports 
of progress in the field of these studies. The seminary, 
introduced last year, is now in successful operation, and 
the beginnings of a seminary library have been made in a 
room set apart for that purpose and for research. 

It will be observed that there is at present no methodical 
instruction in rhetoric in Yale University, and that in Yale 
College composition is systematically taught in but one course, 
and that an elective, though incidentally in connection with 
the preparation of papers in the literature classes. In the 
Sheffield Scientific School, Juniors receive instruction in com- 
position for an hour a week throughout the year. In the 
College, provision has at length been made for the regular 
teaching of both rhetoric and composition in the future. 
Dr. Charles S. Baldwin, late of Columbia College, will have 
charge of this work. For next year he will give to the 
Sophomores a required course of an hour a week out of the 
three devoted to English, besides conducting the criticism of 
Sophomore essays. The subjoined announcement will indi- 
cate the nature of his proposed work with upper-class men : — 

Competitors for the Porter, DeForest, Townsend, TenEyck, Betts, 
and McLaughlin prizes have the privilege of regular consultation with 
Dr. Baldwin in rhetoric at his office in 15 White Hall. The same 
privilege is offered to a limited number of competent Seniors and 
Juniors who wish to combine an optional course in composition with 
any elective course requiring essays, orwho have shown special aptitude 
for some distinct kind of writing. 



88 THE TEACHING OF EKGLTSH. 

Only one linguistic course in English is offered in Yale 
College, and this is pursued by but ten undergraduates, 
, though also by several graduates. This will indicate that 
the study of English linguistics (the term philology, of 
course, comprises literary study) has not yet secured a firm 
foothold in the College proper. 

In estimating the amount of work performed by the mem- 
bers of the teaching staff, it must not be overlooked that, 
because of the size of the classes and the number of divisions, 
a three-hour course often represents twelve hours of instruc- 
tion per week, and a two-hour course four or six, and that 
the professors who give undergraduate instruction are the 
only ones to offer courses in the Graduate School. To com- 
pare the equipment in English with that in some other 
departments of the College proper, it may be mentioned that 
this year there have been seven men in Greek • — four pro- 
fessors, one instructor, and two tutors ; in mathematics six 
- — three professors, two assistant professors, and one tutor ; 
and in Latin six — three professors, one instructor, and two 
tutors. 

The method of teaching most employed throughout the 
College and Scientific School is a combination of recitation 
and lecture, or consists of recitations alternating with occa- 
sional lectures. The combination of recitation and lecture 
might more accurately be described as recitation intermingled 
with discussion, or with informal comments by the instructor. 

The general purpose of the undergraduate literary instruc- 
tion in both departments is to foster the love of literature and 
the development of the critical sense, implying, as the latter 
does, the fullest appreciation of all excellent qualities. 
Methods vary, as they must, with the individuality of the 
teacher. The writer might formulate the especial object 
which he proposes to himself as the development in the 
student, whether graduate or undergraduate, of insight and 



ENGLISH AT YALE UNIVERSITY. 89 

power, and indeed he conceives this to be tlie end of all 
education whatever. The imparting of information seems to 
him quite a secondary object ; and a love for literature is most 
likely, as he thinks, to be promoted by the acquisition of 
insight and power. Of course these terms must be taken in 
the broadest sense, so as to include the emotional and aesthetic 
faculties as well as the purel}^ intellectual, the will and the 
moral nature no less than the reason. To this end no study 
can be better suited than English, its comprehensiveness, 
variety, and richness of content rendering it an unsurpassed 
aliment of the spiritual life, while, by proper methods of in- 
struction, it may be made a most effective instrument of 
spiritual discipline. 



ENGLISH AT COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 

PROFESSOK BRANDER MATTHEWS. 

In a small college a professor of English is called upon to 
give instruction in three or four distinct subjects — in the 
use of the English language, ordinarily termed rhetoric, in 
the history of the English language, in the history of Eng- 
lish literature, and often also (if he should happen to be 
ambitious) in the history of the development of the more 
important literary forms (the drama, for example, and the 
novel), in other literatures as well as in English. In a large 
college, and in a university where much graduate work is 
carried on, these four subjects are divided among different 
professors, each of whom, whatever the title of his chair, in 
reality gives instruction in those divisions of the subject in 
which he takes most interest. At Columbia College we have 
a professor of rhetoric and English composition, Mr. George 
R. Carpenter, with several assistants. We have a professor 
of English language and literature, Mr. Thomas R. Price, and 
an adjunct professor of English, Mr; A. V. Williams Jackson. 
We have also two professors of literature, Mr. George E. 
Woodberry and myself. 

In the Department of Rhetoric, Prof. G. R. Carpenter and 
his chief assistant, Mr. Baldwin, lecture to the lower classes 
on the principles of English composition. As the best way to 
teach students to write is to have them write freely and fre- 
quently, they are called upon to express themselves on topics 
in which they are interested, and often of their own choice. 
Their written work for other professors is often submitted 

40 



ENGLISH AT COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 41 

also to the instructors in rhetoric. These essays are criticised 
by the instructors in private talks with every individual 
student. The general tendency of the instruction is affirm- 
ative rather than negative. In other words, instead of telling 
the student what he must not do, and of dwelling on the 
faults he should avoid, the aim of the instructors is to show 
him how to express himself easily and vigorously. As this is 
Professor Carpenter's first year at Columbia, the courses in 
rhetoric are not yet fully developed ; next year they will be 
enlarged and increased. Certain courses given by other pro- 
fessors really belong in the Department of Rhetoric. One of 
these is Professor Price's course (two hours a week through- 
out the year) on the laws of prose composition in English. 
Another is my own (one hour a week throughout the year) 
on the art of English versification, an attempt to give prac- 
tical instruction in metrical composition. 

The instruction in the history of the English language is 
as distinct as may be from tlie instruction in the history of 
English literature. In the Department of the Germanic Lan- 
guages, of which Professor H. H. Boyesen is the head, he 
and Professor W. H. Carpenter offer courses in Icelandic, in 
Gothic, in Middle High German and in Old High German, all 
of which would be useful to a student of English philology. 
Professor Jackson has one course (two hours a week through- 
out the year) in Anglo-Saxon language and historical English. 
Grammar ; another (two hours a week, half the year only) 
on Anglo-Saxon poetry ; a third (two hours a week, half the 
year only) on Early and Middle English from the twelfth to 
the fifteenth century. Professor Price has a course (two 
hours a week throughout the year) on Anglo-Saxon prose 
and historical English syntax. 

In the history of English literature, Professor Price has 
three courses (each two hours a week throughout the year), 
one on Shakespeare : language, versification, and method of 



42 THE TEACHING OP ENGLISH. 

dramatic poetry ; another on Chaucer : language, versifica- 
tion, and method of narrative poetry; and a third on The 
poetry of Tennyson, Browning, and Matthew Arnold. A 
course on the English drama to the closing of the theatres 
(1640), exclusive of Shakespeare (two hours a week through- 
out the year), is given conjointly by Professors Jackson and 
Woodberry. Professor Woodberry gives four other courses ; 
two (each one hour a week for half the year) on Spenser 
and the Elizabethan poets, exclusive of drama, and on Mil- 
ton and the Caroline poets; and two (each two hours a 
week throughout the year) on Eighteenth century liter- 
ature and on Nineteenth century literature. This last 
course considers only British authors, and therefore it con- 
flicts in no way with my own course (two hours a week 
throughout the year) on American literature. 

Perhaps these three divisions, rhetoric, English language, 
and English literature, include all the courses which can 
fairly be called English ; but closely allied to the first and to 
the third of these divisions is literature, — literature at large, 
independent of any given tongue, just as linguistics is inde- 
pendent of any given language, and going from one tongue to 
another, just as linguistics goes from one language to another. 
In this sense the study of literature is the tracing of the evo- 
lution of literary form and of the development of criticism as 
masterpieces came into existence. In this department Pro- 
fessor "Woodberry has two courses, one (two hours a week 
throughout the year) on the history and theory of criti- 
cism; Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Quintilian, Sidney, Boileau, 
Dryden, Lessing, Coleridge ; and another, open only to stu- 
dents who have taken the first, on the practice of criti- 
cism, a review of the greater works of literature, with specific 
original inquiries in particular epochs. And I have two 
courses also, one (two hours a week throughout the year) 
on the epochs of the drama: Greek, Latin, Spanish, Eng- 



ENGLISH AT COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 43 

lish, French, German ; and another (one hour a week 
througliont the year) on the development of the modern 
novel, from the Gesta Romanorum to Waverley. All four of 
these courses 'are intended primarily foT graduates, and are 
open only to them and to seniors. 

From the foregoing paragraphs the reader can see how 
fully English is treated at Columbia College, and from how 
many sides it is approached ; and he can judge for himself 
whether there is any unjust discrimination against either the 
linguistic half of the subject or the literary. I have to add 
only that in no course in the history of English literature, or 
in the history of literature, is any text-book used so far as I 
am aware. All the professors are agreed in insisting that the 
student sha 1 get at first hand his knowledge of the authors 
considered in turn, and that he shall from time to time pre- 
pare essays of his own, involving individual research. 



ENGLISH AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 

PKOFESSOR BARRETT WENDELL. 

During the present year (1893-94) the teachers of English 
at Harvard are three professors, two assistant professors, three 
instructors appointed for terms of more than one year, five 
instructors appointed for one year, and seven assistants, — a 
total of twenty. During the present year these teachers have 
in charge nine courses and seventeen half-courses. A whole 
course at Harvard meets three hours a week throughout the 
year ; and a half-course either three (in some cases two) hours 
a week for half the year, or once a week for the whole. In ad- 
dition to the courses actually in progress, one course and seven 
half-courses announced by the department of English are not 
given this year, but have been given in the past, and will be 
given in the future, alternating with some of those now in hand. 

The report of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences 
for the preceding year (1892-93) shows that the state of affairs 
that year, which may be taken as typical, was as follows : In 
nine full courses, — including the course in English composi- 
tion prescribed for Freshmen, which numbered 499, — there 
were 52 graduate students, 113 Seniors, 119 Juniors, 136 
Sophomores, 377 Freshmen, 88 special students, 62 scientific 
students, 1 divinity student, and 3 law students, — a total of 
952 enrolments. In thirteen half-courses, — including the 
courses in English composition prescribed for Sophomores 
and for Juniors, which together numbered 648, — there were 
58 graduate students, 188 Seniors, 382 Juniors, 281 Sopho- 
mores, 12 Freshmen, 51 special students, 25 scientific stu- 

44 



ENGLISH AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 45 

dents, 1 divinity student, 3 law students, and 1 student of 
agriculture — a total of 998 enrolments. No statistics are 
available as to how many of these students were enrolled in 
more than one of the courses under consideration. These 
figures, then, are valuable chiefly in showing the amount of 
teaching, in terms of courses and half-courses, actually de- 
manded from the teachers. It may be added, however, that, 
as a rule, no Freshman is admitted to an elective course in 
English, while for the regular half-course in English com- 
position prescribed for Sophomores tliere is an alternative 
elective full course in the same subject, in which last year 
122 Sophomores were enrolled. The full course in English 
composition prescribed for Freshmen and the half-courses in 
the same subject prescribed for the two years following com- 
prise all the required work in English at Harvard. 

In the course prescribed for Freshmen, Professor A. S. 
Hill's Principles of Iihetoric is used as a text-book. Lec- 
tures based thereon are given, and also lectures dealing with 
some aspects of English literature. Of these lectures stu- 
dents are required to write summaries. Besides this written 
work, every member of the class writes a composition in the 
class-room once a week ; and these compositions are carefully 
criticised by the teachers. In the half-course prescribed for 
Sophomores, lectures are given on exposition, argument, de- 
scription, and narration ; and during the year the students 
write twelve themes of from five hundred to a thousand 
words. These are carefully criticised by teachers, and gen- 
erally rewritten by the students with this criticism in mind. 
In the half-course prescribed for Juniors, lectures are given 
on argument ; and the students make one formal analysis of 
a masterpiece of argumentative composition, and write four 
arguments — known as "forensics " — of from a thousand to 
fifteen hundred words. Each of these is preceded by a brief, 
which is criticised by a teacher before the forensic is written. 



46 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

The forensics themselves are also carefully criticised and 
usually rewritten. All teachers engaged in these courses 
keep frequent office hours for personal conference with their 
pupils. 

Apart from these courses, all the work in English at 
Harvard is elective. Of the elective courses, only one — an 
elementary half-course in Anglo-Saxon — can be called purely 
linguistic. Three courses and five half-courses may be de- 
scribed as both linguistic and literary. These deal with 
various specimens of English literature from Beowulf to 
Milton, in each case attending both to the literary meaning 
of the matter in hand and to grammatical details in the 
broadest sense of the term. One full course and five half- 
courses may be described as literary, demanding a great 
amount of reading and critical work but paying no attention 
to linguistic detail. These deal with various periods of Eng- 
lish literature, from the sixteenth century to the present 
time. In the broader sense of the term, all these courses — 
linguistic and literary alike — may be called philological. 
Of the remaining work, two courses and two half-courses 
are in English composition ; one half-course is in elocution ; 
and one consists of oral discussion of topics in history and 
economics. 

There is no sharp distinction, then, between literary courses 
and linguistic. The single full course given this year in 
literature apart from linguistics is a very advanced one in 
special research. Of the teachers, one professor, one assistant 
professor, and one instructor concern themselves wholly with 
the work classified as both literary and linguistic. All the 
remaining teachers concern themselves more or less with 
composition, either prescribed or elective. The courses in 
literature apart from linguistics are this year in charge of 
four of these teachers — one professor, one assistant profes- 
sor, and two instructors. 



ENGLISH AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 47 

Last year the largest elective courses were in composition, 
when the most elementary numbered 154, and the next 148. 
The largest course among those both linguistic and literary 
was one in Shakespeare, which numbered 111; the largest 
half-course in literature, which dealt with the Eighteenth 
century, numbered 122. In general, the courses dealing either 
linguistically or otherwise with the earlier periods of English 
literature were small and mature. One, of the nature of a 
'* seminary," so called, which dealt with Early English metri- 
cal romances, numbered only six, all graduate students. 

In the courses in composition, prescribed and elective 
alike, little importance is attached to theoretical knowledge 
of rhetoric as distinguished from constant practice in writing 
under the most minute practicable criticism. In the two full 
elective courses given this year, the students write both daily 
themes of about a hundred words and fortnightly themes of 
from five hundred to a thousand words. This work is fre- 
quently discussed in person with the teachers, who for this 
purpose keep office hours — quite distinct from regular class- 
room appointments — averaging five hours a week. It will 
be seen, then, that the use of text-books, as distinguished 
from personal instruction, is reduced to a minimum. The 
text-books actually in use have been written for the purposes 
in hand by the teachers who use them. 

Of the courses in linguistics and in literature alike it may 
be said that no text-books are generally used. In linguistics 
the student must naturally provide himself with a good stan- 
dard copy of the text under consideration ; but the better 
part of the comments on these texts is supplied by the actual 
teachers. In literature the student is always sent directly to 
the works of the writers under consideration. Of these he is 
often required to read so much as to make the purchase of 
the Avorks in question impracticable. In such event students 
commonly read in the college library, where as many copies 



48 THE TEACHING OP ENGLISH. 

as possible of the works under consideration are reserved for 
their use. In no course in literature is any regular text-book 
employed. 

In the matter of methods, it has long been held by the 
teachers of English at Harvard that each teacher's best 
method is his own. When a course is given into a man's 
charge, then, he is absolutely free to conduct it in any way 
he chooses. The natural result is such wide divergence of 
method in detail that no valuable generalization concerning 
such detail can be made. One man finds recitations useful, 
generally interspersed with frequent comment ; another gives 
lectures ; a third prefers personal conference ; a fourth finds 
the best results coming from properly directed discussions of 
special topics by his class, — and so on. Furthermore, in cer- 
tain cases the methods of the same teacher greatly vary with 
different classes and at different times. On only two points, 
perhaps, may definite agreement among the teachers be as- 
serted : the first is that a candidate for honors in English, 
in addition to very high proficiency in six elective courses, 
ought to know at least the elements of Anglo-Saxon, ought to 
have made some study of pure literature, and ought to write 
respectably ; the second is that the best educational results 
are attainable by such free and mutually cordial efforts of 
teachers differing widely in temperament and special interests 
as we at present enjoy. 

It may be added that the Secretary of Harvard University 
will gladly send to any applicant a pamphlet describing in 
detail our courses in English ; and that any teacher of Eng- 
lish at Harvard will gladly explain his actual methods to any 
properly accredited inquirer. Persons seriously interested in 
these methods, then, will probably find a visit to Harvard 
instructive. 



ENGLISH AT STANFOED UNIVERSITY. 

PROFESSOR MELVILLE B. ANDERSON. 

In order to understand the purposes and methods of the 
English courses at the Leland Stanford Jr. University, it 
is necessary to know something about our system of what is 
technically called '^ major subjects." At the beginning of 
his second year in the University every student is expected 
to elect a specialty, to which he shall devote at least a 
third of his time throughout his undergraduate course. So 
soon as the specialty, or major subject, has been chosen, 
the professor of that subject becomes the student's official 
adviser, and no degree is granted until the course pursued 
by the student shall have been in all respects satisfactory 
to the professor. It will be seen that this system combines 
the advantages of great freedom of election on the part 
of the student, with those of direct, close, and friendly 
supervision on the part of an expert. Thus, for example, if a 
student upon entering the University chooses English as his 
major subject, he is expected to report every semester to one 
of the professors of English, Avhose approval he is bound 
to secure for the course he elects. Should the student see 
fit to elect certain subjects not approved by his major 
professor, he is perfectly free to do so, the probable result 
being that his residence at the University will be so much 
the more prolonged. If, therefore, a student is willing either 
to prolong his residence or to renounce the hope of obtaining 
a degree, his freedom of election is conditioned only upon 
his competency to get on in the studies elected. The usual 

49 



50 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

result of the system is simply this : The student takes the 
five or more hours of work in English (if that be his 
specialty) ; several more hours in collateral subjects, such 
as Latin, French, German, or History, are recommended by 
the professor ; and the student is left free to choose for 
himself such other subjects as may attract him. 

The practical working of this system has hitherto proved 
very satisfactory. Students elect for the most part only 
such subjects as they have taste or talent for, and professors 
have the pleasure and inspiration of working with earnest 
and enthusiastic men and Avomen. The organic quality of 
a course thus planned from semester to semester by the 
interested student, under the advice of his professor, turns 
out to be far superior to that of the conventional college 
curriculum. Under the system here described, the graduate 
finds himself pretty thoroughly grounded in some science, 
or in some group of related languages, and goes out into 
the world, not indeed master of a specialty, but at least 
interested in some branch of rational research, and versed 
in the apparatus and methods essential to its further pur- 
suit. 

I can scarcely define the aims of the courses in English 
better than I have done in the following sentence from the 
University Register: ''(1) To give training in the formu- 
lation and expression of thought; (2) to impart a scientific 
knowledge of the English language and of literary history, 
English and European ; (3) to acquaint the student with a 
juster and more liberal method of literary criticism; (4) to 
introduce him to literature as an art — to cultivate a refined 
appreciation of what is best, and thus to reveal unfailing 
sources of pure enjoyment." 

Before proceeding to describe the courses, it may be well 
to advert briefly to the English preparation exacted for ad- 
mission to the University. The requirements for admission 



ENGLISH AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY. 61 

were at first modelled upon those of the University of 
Californica, which are similar to those of the New England 
Association of Colleges ; namely, a play or two of Shake- 
speare, the Si)' Roger de Coverley Papers, a story of Thack- 
eray, and a few of the masterpieces of English and 
American poetry. Under this system the examination con- 
sists mainly in a test of the applicant's ability to quote 
readily, to explain allusions, to write outlines and abstracts, 
and in various ways to show upon paper that he has read 
and digested the work in question. While this system is 
a great advance upon the old practice of requiring an 
acquaintance with rhetoric and the formal side of grammar 
and composition, experience shows it to be not quite suf- 
ficient. The tendency is to encourage the " getting up " 
of a certain number of books, and the cramming of a 
modicum of information about words and etymologies, rather 
than the attainment of such a practical acquaintance with 
the vernacular as a student needs in order to take a college 
course successfully. We have therefore thought it wise to 
lay more stress upon the student's preparation in composition 
than has hitherto been customary in our secondary schools. 
While there has been no nominal increase in the require- 
ments for admission in English, it has become, as a matter 
of fact, more dilBcult for the graduates of high schools 
and other secondary schools to satisfy our requirements. 
Thus, out of perhaps a hundred and fifty applicants for ad- 
mission in English at the beginning of the present year, 
only some forty wrote satisfactory papers. It is hoped 
that our course in adhering rigidly to the relatively high, 
but really very moderate, .standard of admission in English 
will have a salutary effect upon secondary instruction in 
California and elsewhere. All that we really ask on the 
side of style is that the student be pretty familiar with the 
mechanical details of composition, — spelling, punctuation, cor- 



62 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

rect sentence structure, paragraphing, and the like, — and that 
he be able to express himself with some idiomatic fluency. 

During the first two years of the short history of the 
English department here, the professors were worn out 
with the drudgery of correcting Freshman themes, — work 
really secondary and preparatory, and in no sense forming 
a proper subject of collegiate instruction. This year in ac- 
cordance with the programme sketched above, we have abso- 
lutely refused to admit to our courses students unprepared 
to do real collegiate work. The Freshman English course 
in theme-writing has been eliminated from our programme, 
and has been turned over to approved teachers and to the 
various secondary schools. Had this salutary innovation 
not been accomplished, all the literary courses would have 
been swept away by the rapidly growing inundation of 
Freshman themes, and all our strength and courage would 
have been dissipated in preparing our students to do re- 
spectable work at more happily equipped Universities. 
As it is, no student is admitted to the course in English 
composition until he has acquired the proficiency above 
indicated. Instead, therefore, of requiring the undivided 
attention of a half-dozen professors, the work in English 
composition now occupies most of the time and strength of 
two. It is plain, however, that one or two additional in- 
structors in this important division of the work will be 
necessary next year. It would be bad policy to allow any 
instructor to devote the whole of his attention to the work 
in English composition; for, however great a man's enthu- 
siasm for such work may be, it is incident to human 
nature that no man can read themes efficiently for more 
than three hours at a stretch, and that the professor does 
his theme-reading more intelligently and more humanely 
when a portion of his time is spent in research preparatory 
to higher instruction. 



ENGLISH AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY. 53 

At the outset of liis university career, the student of 
English is advised to begin or continue an acquaintance with 
one or two, at least, of the chief foreign languages, ancient 
or modern. It is also suggested that he make himself 
proficient in some one of the natural or physical sciences, 
in order that he may not remain entirely a stranger to the 
great current of positive research and philosophy. 

Apart from the advanced work in English composition 
and forensics, intended to qualify the student to express 
with idiomatic grace and logical cogency whatever he may 
have to say or to write, the first work which confronts the 
student of English at Stanford is a careful study of some 
of the prose writers of the nineteenth century : such as 
Macaulay, De Quincey, Carlyle, Savage Landor, Cardinal 
Newman, Matthew Arnold. It is a fact that the majority 
of students enjoy good prose at an earlier stage of their 
culture than is requisite to the real appreciation of poetry. 
It is, moreover, observed that such a study of the best \)vose 
writers gives the instructor a fine opportunity to become ac- 
quainted with his students, and to throw out suggestions that 
may help them to correct or cure their illiteracy. Moreover, 
this course proves an invaluable adjunct to the course in com- 
position, inasmuch as nothing conduces more to the mastery 
of a good style than an intimate acquaintance with the best 
models. 

The majority of our students come to the University with 
little Latin and less Greek ; and even those who come to us 
with thorough training in the rudiments of one or both of 
these Cultur-Sprachen, come entirely innocent of anything in 
the nature of a comprehension of their literary masterpieces. 
It has therefore been thought wise to offer courses in ancient 
and foreign classics, treated through the medium of transla- 
tions. Professor Newcomer is now conducting such a course 
in Homer and Dante, devoting one semester to each of these 



54 THE TEACHIKG OF ENGLISH. 

great poets — whose works, Mr. Lowell not long ago told us, 
count among the five indispensable books of the world. 
These courses are largely attended by interested and 
earnest students, some of whom are acquainted with the clas- 
sical languages, but most of whom are not. I may say that 
Professor Moulton's a 'priori views as to the advantage of 
courses like this are fully borne out by our experience so far. 
If anything like a systematic and thorough reading, even of 
the five indispensable authors enumerated by Mr. Lowell, is 
to be secured on the part of the majority of educated men and 
women in this busy modern world, it must be by some such 
means as this. At all events, from the standpoint of 
the English teacher merely, we count the time not lost that 
is spent in acquainting students, as thoroughly as may be 
through translations, with at least a few of the masterpieces 
of the ancient and mediaeval world. 

Possibly some may find it difficult to understand why 
authors belonging to such remote times and diverse languages 
are to be included in courses in English. But how can one 
study modern poetry without knowing something, for exam- 
ple, of 

"Thebes and Pelops' line, 
Or the tale of Troy divine ? " 

And how can an acquaintance with these great quarries of 
imaginative literature be better obtained, on the part of the 
non-classical student, than by the study of a good translation 
of Homer and of translations of a few typical masterpieces 
of the Athenian stage ? These last are not neglected. The 
course in the ancient classical drama, studied from transla- 
tions, is similar in aim to the course in Homer and Dante, the 
latter being introductory to Spenser and Milton especially, 
the former to the general study of Shakespeare. In the suc- 
ceeding semester an introductory course in Shakespeare is 
undertaken, which is not only an attempt at an inductive 



ENGLISH AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY. 55 

study of methods of dramatic construction, but also a general 
survey of Shakespeare's life and times, his art and his 
thought. 

In what follows, in order to prevent confusion, I shall des- 
ignate the courses by the numbers by which they are known 
to us. 

Course 26 .is a critical study of a few plays of Shake- 
speare, involving a collation of such of the quarto and folio 
editions as may be obtainable in cheap reprints. At present, 
for example, the class is engaged in the task of constructing 
a text of Hamlet based upon Victor's reprints of the first and 
second quartos and the first folio (1623). Members of this 
class are advised to make no use of the work of modern 
editors, but to do their best to form from the original editions 
such a text as the author himself would have approved, thus 
putting themselves back into a time immediately succeeding 
the author's death and the publication of the first collected 
edition of his writings. The value of such work as this for 
the acquirement of a sense of what Shakespearian scholarship 
means, and, still better, for the attainment of fine taste and 
discrimination in matters of textual criticism, should be too 
obvious to require comment. Of course such a class as this 
must necessarily be small, both for the attainment of the best 
results and because only the more advanced undergraduates 
are capable of profiting by work of such critical character. 
Indeed, as matters stand at present, this course is better 
suited to the graduate student than to any but the more 
thoroughly trained undergraduates. 

Among the courses preliminary to this more advanced 
Shakespearian study I should have mentioned Course 16, de- 
voted to the Pre-Shakespearian Drama and to the contempo- 
raries of Shakespeare, as well as to a more cursory review 
of the growth and development of the modern European 
drama, especially in Spain, Italy, and France. In like man- 



56 THE TEACHIlsrG OF ENGLISH. 

ner, Course 17 is in a sense introductory to the study of Mil- 
ton, being a survey of the minor poets of the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries, from Tottel's Miscellaiiy to the death 
of Dryden. As at present conducted by Professor Lathrop, 
this course is, however, by no means elementary, involving as 
it does the study and the attempted solution of many obscure 
and vexed questions of literary history. , 

Course 18 involves a revicAV of the more noteworthy lit- 
erary masters of the English Literature of the eighteenth 
century, together with a somewhat philosophical treatment 
of the uniquely intimate and extremely interesting relations 
between literature and life in that time, — a time which more 
than any other rang out the old and rang in the new. 

Courses 19 and 20, given by Professor Hudson in alternate 
years, are respectively a comparative study of the chief 
movements and tendencies of contemporary literature, and 
a review of the novelists of the present century, together 
with a brief treatment of the earlier development of the novel. 

Courses 24 and 25, given in alternate years, are respec- 
tively devoted to the study of Edmund Spenser and of John 
Milton. In the case of Spenser a critical examination is 
made of his chief poems, with special reference to their liter- 
ary and ethical qualities, and to the influence of Spenser 
upon other poets ; and in the case of Milton the additional 
effort is made to realize his character and the relation of his 
activity to the time in which he lived. 

Course 27 is a reading course, devoted to the somewhat 
cursory but not necessarily superficial reading and interpre- 
tation of characteristic longer and shorter poems by Words- 
worth, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Coleridge. 

Course 21, to which three hours a week through the year 
are devoted, is a study of the history of American literature 
and of the most significant works of representative writers. 
In this, as in all other courses in literature, students are in 



ENGLISH AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY. 57 

every way incited to possess themselves of the complete 
works of the principal masters studied. 

Professor Fliigel's undergraduate work consists of one ele- 
mentary course in Anglo-Saxon, and one in Chaucer, each three 
hours weekly through the year. The main aim of the former 
is to introduce the student to the spirit of Anglo-Saxon liter- 
ature, and to give him facility in translating, less stress being 
laid upon phonological and grammatical details. Inasmuch as 
all students who make English their " major " are required to 
take this course, and as better results may be gained in 
smaller classes, this first year's class in Anglo-Saxon will be 
divided into two sections, in charge of two recently appointed 
assistants. 

From the foregoing outline it will be noted that relatively 
considerable attention is given to the direct study of the texts 
of the great classic authors who illustrate English literature ; 
and that, although literary history is by no means neglected, 
it is nearly everywhere made subordinate to the supreme aim 
of introducing the student largely to the best literature. It 
seems almost superfluous to add that, while every professor 
employs his own method of instruction, no one emj^loys the 
text-book method. Independent first-hand study, and candor 
in the statement of the results gained by such study, are inva- 
riably encouraged. 

A word in conclusion with reference to that portion of our 
work which, from the scholar's standpoint, is most interesting, 
if not most important ; namely, the philological and literary 
seminaries for graduate students. It should be noted that 
a considerable proportion of the undergraduate courses are 
adapted to the needs of graduates of other colleges, and of 
graduates of the University in other courses than English ; 
but for the attainment of the advanced degrees of Master and 
Doctor in English literature and philology, every such stu- 
dent is required to become a member of the two seminaries. 



58 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

It is impossible here to enter into descriptive details with 
respect to this branch of the work. At present all of the 
five professors of English are so largely engrossed with the 
numerous undergraduate courses, that too little time is left to 
devote to the needs of advanced students ; still, the seminary 
course is by no means entirely neglected. 

The advanced courses in philology consist entirely of lec- 
tures on historical English grammar, on Old and Middle Eng- 
lish literature, and on Beoivulf (seminary). With these will be 
given in alternate years a seminary course on King Alfred 
and his time (four hours weekly through the year) ; a course 
in Early English lyrical poetry from the Anglo-Saxon times 
to the Eeformation (three hours through the year) ; and a 
history of Early English metrics. 

An additional course is given on Early English palaeogra- 
phy, intended as a general introduction to the Schriftwesen 
of Old England, to the reading of English MSS., and to 
studies in textual criticism. Skeat's facsimiles, and a num- 
ber of photographs of Old English MSS., prepared especially 
for this class, are placed in the student's hands. 

The literary seminary is conducted in two divisions : one, 
under the charge of Professor Hudson, is devoted this year to 
the development of the modern novel ; the other, conducted 
by myself, is now pursuing a comparative study of the chief 
works of Tennyson and Browning, and, incidentally, of 
the predecessors of Tennyson — that is, of the authors to 
whom Tennyson seems either stylistically or spiritually most 
indebted. It should be understood that the subjects of the 
Seminary courses vary from year to year, and that, even 
when it seems best to deal with the same subject in two suc- 
cessive years, the method of treatment and the sequence of 
topics is such that the same individual may continue the 
study with profit. 

I have been requested to add a few statistics. Last year 



ENGLISH AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY. 59 

six professors gave instruction in thirty English courses, to a 
total of seven hundred and seventy students, counting by class 
registration. The total number of individuals receiving in- 
struction in English was not far from four hundred and fifty. 
The total number of hours per week occupied by the lectures 
of these six professors was fifty-one in the first and fifty-six 
in the second semester. The number of lectures or.recitations 
per week required of each professor varies from eight to ten. 
The number of students receiving instruction this year^ is 
smaller than last year, owing to the severer requirements in 
English composition. The number of professors is now five : 
a professor of English literature, a professor of English 
philology, an associate professor of English literature, and 
two assistant professors. There are also two "assistants in 
English," and additional appointments are contemplated. 

1 This article was first printed in March, 18W. Inasmuch as the some- 
what numerous changes which tlie courses have undergone since that time 
are, after all, matters of detail, and can be ascertained from the current 
University announcements, it has been thought best to reprint the whole as 
first written. The statistical information also represents the present state 
of things sufidciently well. Unfortunately, however, we have not been able 
to carry out the intention expressed in the last sentence of the article. 

M. B. A. 



ENGLISH AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY, i 

PKOFESSOK HIKAM CORSON. 

At Cornell University, lectures are given on English 
literature, poetical and prose, from the fourteenth to the 
nineteenth century inclusive, in eight groups, of which 
Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Words- 
worth, Browning and Tennyson, are made the central figures. 
The lectures are given daily, except Saturday, and to the 
same class, so that there are about two hundred lectures given 
during the academic year. A large portion of the class are 
special students who have come to devote most of their time 
to English literature. They, accordingly, do a great deal of 
reading in connection with the lectures. It is made a special 
object of the lectures to bring the students into direct relation- 
ship with the authors treated, and hence much reading is 
introduced. The literature is presented mainly in its essen- 
tial character, rather than in its historical, though the latter 
receives attention, but not such as to set the minds of students 
in that direction. It is considered of prime importance that 
they should first attain to a sympathetic appreciation of what 
is essential and intrinsic, before the adventitious features of 
literature — features due to time and place — be considered. 
What is regarded as of great, of chief, importance, indeed, in 
literary study, in some of our institutions of learning, namely, 
the relations of works of genius to their several times and 
places (miscalled the philosophy of literature), is of the least 
importance, so far as culture, in its truest sense, is concerned. 
Literature is thus made chiefly an intellectual and philosophi- 

1 Properly speaking, the title ot this paper should be " English Literature 
at Cornell University," as no attempt is made to discuss the subject of Eng- 
lisli on the linguistic side. — Edr. 

60 



ENGLISH AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY, 61 

cal study ; its true function, namely, to quicken the spiritual 
faculties, is quite shut off. An exchisively intellectual atti- 
tude is taken toward what is a production of the whole man, 
as a thinking, emotional, imaginative, moral, and religious 
being — a production which can be adequately responded to 
only by one in whom these several attributes are, in some 
degree, active ; and literary education should especially aim 
after their activity ; should aim to bring the student into sym- 
pathetic relationship with the permanent and the eternal — 
with that which is independent of time and place. 

There is danger, too, in presenting literature to young peo- 
ple in its historical relations, and in '' philosophizing " about 
it, of turning out cheap and premature philosophers. A work 
of genius renders the best service when it is assimilated in its 
absolute character. All great works of genius are intimately 
related to the several times and places in which they were 
produced ; and it is important to know these relations, in the 
proper time — when the "years that bring the philosophic 
mind " have been reached, not before. But it is far more im- 
portant to know the relations of these works to the universal, 
to the absolute, to that which is alive forevermore, by virtue 
of which alone they continue to live. Mrs. Browning, in 
her Aurora Leigh, speaks of great poets as "the only truth- 
tellers now left to God — the only speakers of essential truth, 
opposed to relative, comparative, and temporal truths ; the 
only holders by his sun-skirts, through conventional gray 
glooms." 

The viode in which genius manifests itself, at certain times, 
in certain places, and under certain circumstances, may be 
explained to some extent ; but the genius itself cannot be ex- 
plained. Environments stimulate or suppress, they do not 
and cannot make genius. The causes which bring it nearer 
to the essential world than men in general are brought, we 
cannot know. The explanation which can be given of its 



62 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

mode of manifestation sKould be called the physiology, not 
the philosophy, of literature. 

And how is the best response to the essential life of a 
poem to be secured by the teacher from the pupil ? I answer, 
by the fullest interpretative vocal rendering of it. On the 
part of the teacher, two things are indispensable : first, that 
he sympathetically assimilate what constitutes the real life of 
the poem ; second, that he have that vocal cultivation de- 
manded for an effective rendering of what he has assimilated. 
Lecturing about poetry does not, of itself, avail any more for 
poetical cultivation than lecturing about music avails, of itself, 
for musical cultivation. Both may be valuable, in the way of 
giving shape to, or organizing, what has previously been felt 
to some extent ; but they cannot take the place of inward ex- 
perience. Vocal interpretation, too, is the most effective mode 
of cultivating in students a susceptibility to form — that uni- 
fication of matter and manner upon which so much of the 
vitality and effectiveness of expressed spiritualized thought 
depend. 

There is no true estimate, among the leaders in the educa- 
tional world, of what vocal culture, worthy of the name, costs ; 
and the kind of encouragement which it receives from them is 
in keeping with their estimate. A system of vocal training 
should be instituted in the lower schools which would give 
pupils complete command of the muscles of articulation, ex- 
tend the compass of the voice, and render it smooth, powerful, 
and melodious. A power of varied intonation should be es- 
pecially cultivated, as it is through intonation that the reader^ s 
sympathies are conducted, and the hearer^s sympathies are . 
secured. 

The reading voice demands as much, and as systematic 
and scientific, cultivation, for the interpretation of the master- 
pieces of poetical and dramatic literature, as the singing voice 
demands for the rendering of the masterpieces of music. But 



ENGLISH AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 63 

what a ridiculous contrast is presented by the methods usu- 
ally employed for the training of the reading voice, and tliose 
employed, as in conservatories of music, for the training of 
the singing voice ! 

To return to the other work in the Department of English 
Literature at Cornell : — 

Eeadings are given by me every Saturday morning, 
throughout the academic year, from English and American 
prose writers. These are open to all students and to any visi- 
tors who may Avish to avail themselves of them. The attend- 
ance is generally large. The selections read are chiefl}^ such 
as bear upon life and character, literature and art. The 
present year they have been, thus far, from essays of George 
Eliot, Professor Dowden, Mr. Iluskin, Mr. Leslie Stephen, 
INIatthew Arnold, Emerson, Lowell, Miss Frances Power Cobbe, 
and some other essayists. The regular members of the class 
afterwards read for themselves the compositions entire from 
which the selections are made, and many are inspired to read 
further from the same authors. 

There are four English literature seminaries, devoted, 
severally, to nineteenth century prose not including novels, 
seventeenth and eighteenth century prose not including nov- 
els, novelists of the nineteenth century, and novelists of the 
eighteenth century. The seminaries are open to graduates, 
special students, and to undergraduates who have maintained 
a high rank in the lecture courses. A work is assigned to 
each member of a seminary, of which he or she makes a care- 
ful stud}', and embodies the result in a paper which is read in 
the seminary and afterwards discussed by the members, each 
member having been required to read in advance the work in 
hand. The papers bear chiefly, almost exclusively, on what 
is understood by their authors to constitute the life, the in- 
forming spirit, the moral proportion, the motives, of the works 
treated. The merely technical is only incidentally, if at all. 



64 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

treated. The present year, essays have been read on all the 
novels of George Eliot, and her poem, The Spanish Gypsy, 
the seminary consisting of twenty-seven members. All the 
essays have been of high merit, showing much insight into 
George Eliot's ^' interpretation of life." 

It should be added that twelve plays of Shakespeare are 
re-ad by me during the present academic year, so cut down as 
to occupy two hours each in the reading. It is purposed so to 
read, in a separate course, next year, the thirty-seven plays, 
two hours a week to be devoted to each play. I would also 
add that by the end of the present year I shall have read 
entire, with requisite comment, to an outside class composed 
of graduate and special students. Browning's The Ring and 
the Booh. The educating value of this great poem is of the 
highest character, embodying, as it does, the poet's ideal of a 
sanctified intellect. 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. 

PROFESSOR CHARLES W. KENT. 

It has been pointed out by Professor March that the 
study of English in America may be traced to two men, Noah 
Webster and Thomas Jefferson. It is well known that as 
early as 1818 Mr. Jefferson included Anglo-Saxon '' as a part 
of the circle of instruction to be given to the students " of 
his projected university. When the University of Virginia 
was finally opened, in 1825, Anglo-Saxon was included in the 
courses offered, and from that day to the present it has 
always been given. But it was intrusted, along with some 
eight or ten modern languages, to Dr. Blatterman, whose 
time must have been vei-y fully occupied. After him. Dr. 
Kraitsir occupied the chair for two years ; and in 1844 Dr. M. 
Scheie DeVere entered upon his distinguished career, which 
with the end of the present session rounds out its fifty years. 
It is computed that since the establishment of the University 
about seven hundred students have elected courses in Anglo- 
Saxon. But the influence of eTefferson was not limited to the 
University of Virginia. Professor March, trained under the 
Websterian influence, but acquainted by residence in Virginia 
with the work of the University of Virginia, was called in 
1857 to Lafayette College, where " English and Anglo-Saxon 
as a separate department of philological study co-ordinate 
with Latin and Greek " was first recognized. The influence 
that had previously led to the study of English at Lafayette 
was Jeffersonian. Professor March says, " Mr. Jefferson's 
plans for his university attracted attention through the whole 

65 



66 ' THE TEACHING- OF ENGLISH. 

country, and it was very likely on their suggestion that the 
founders of Lafayette College, which was chartered in 1826, 
made the study of Anglo-Saxon and English prominent in 
their proposed curriculum." 

There is a tradition- — how well-grounded it is impossible 
to say without further examination — that the first distinc- 
tive course in English literature ever offered in America was 
planned and carried out by three University of Virginia grad- 
uates, -who were associated in the management of a school for 
young ladies. But the interest in the English language and 
literature, indicated by the importance attached to them by 
the founder of the University and her sons, did not manifest 
itself in any very active development of their study. These 
subjects, at first assigned to the chairs of modern languages 
and of philosophy, and later grouped in part with history, 
were not recognized as a distinct department until 1882, when 
Professor James M. Garnett was elected professor of English 
language and literature. Ten years later, in 1892, the 
Board of Visitors created the Linden Kent Memorial School 
of English Literature. The establishment of this chair ena- 
bles Professor Garnett to devote his entire time to English 
language, while the new chair includes rhetoric and belles 
lettres, besides English literature. 

With the full freedom of election characteristic of this 
institution since its foundation, young men may pursue 
courses in either or both of these schools. In the School of 
the English Language, B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. courses are 
offered. A synopsis of these courses is herewith given : — 

B.A. Course: Modern English. — In this class the study 
of the English drama and of the descriptive history of the 
language is pursued. Shakespeare is made a special subject 
of study. The critical study of one or two plays of Shake- 
speare, with private reading of about a fourth of the plays, is 
followed by similar study of selected works of other dramatic 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. 67 

authors. Lectures on the liistory of the Elizabethan drama 
are given in connection with the study of Shakespeare. These 
treat the early dramatic forms prevalent in England, the rise 
of regular comedy and tragedy, the pre-8hakespearian drama- 
tists, the Shakespearian period, and the post-Shakespearian 
dramatists to the close of the theatres in 1642. The study of 
the English drama occupies the first half-session ; that of the 
history of English treated from an elementary point of view, 
the second half-session. The course closes wath the reading 
of some work in practical illustration of the formation of 
English. The aim is to give such a knowledge of the history 
of the language as every educated man should possess. Three 
lectures a week are given. 

The object of the B.A. course is to treat specific periods 
of the language from both a philological and literary point 
of view, stress being laid upon the former; and the Shake- 
spearian period has been selected as that best suited to the 
beginner, and perhaps the most interesting. 

M.A. Course: Old avd Middle Em/lisJ/. — In this class 
the historical and philological study of the language is pur- 
sued, the class beginning with its oldest forms, and tracing 
the language, by the study of specimens, through its different 
periods to the formation of modern English. After a thor- 
ough study of the grammar, selected pieces of Old and 
Middle English prose and poetry are read, with a view to 
acquiring a philological knowledge of the origin and structure 
of English. Lectures on the position of English in the Indo- 
European family of languages, and on the history of the 
language, are also given. These treat in outline the other 
branches of the Indo-European family of languages, and in 
detail the Teutonic branch. Special stress is laid upon the 
development of the language during the Old and Middle Eng- 
lish periods, and the infusion of the Romance elements which 
so greatly affected its character. The study of Old English 



68 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

(Anglo-Saxon) occupies the first half-session ; that of Middle 
English the second half-session. In addition to what is read 
in class, assigned parallel reading of Old and Middle English 
works is also required. It is well for the student to have 
studied the history of English as given in the class of Modern 
English, or some similar course, before entering upon the 
study of the course in Old and Middle English, although this 
is not essential, as the two may be studied together. Some 
antecedent philological study is, however, necessary. The 
aim is to lay the foundation for more advanced studies in 
English philology. There are three lectures a week. 

Ph.D. Cou7'se. — In this course, to which the M.A. course 
is a necessary preparation, the method pursued is freer, and 
the taste of the individual student is consulted to a greater 
degree. The more advanced study of English philology is 
the general subject ; and whether the students shall accom- 
plish this by a more extensive reading of Old and Middle 
English works, or by a study of Gothic as the basis for com- 
parative study of the Teutonic languages, is left to the stu- 
dent himself. In either case, encouragement to individual 
research is given by the requirement of a dissertation on 
some subject cognate with the course pursued. In all classes 
the work is not limited to that assigned for class-preparation, 
but a course of parallel or private reading is prescribed, on 
which also the class is duly examined. 

In the Linden Kent Memorial School of English Litera- 
ture, as in the School of the English Language, three courses 
are offered. 

B.A. Course. — The class meets three hours a week 
throughout the session. Eor convenience of presentation, the 
course is divided as follows : — 

1. Rhetoric. This comprises a careful study of the prin- 
ciples of style and of invention in prose discourse, with exer- 
cise in essay-writing, and in the critical analysis of selected 
specimens of English prose. 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. 69 

2. Vei'sification. This course is based on the professor's 
notes on poetics. The lectures discuss theories and princi- 
ples of versification, morphology of verse, history of verse 
forms, kinds of poetry, etc. Class exercises of various kinds 
are assigned from time to time. 

3. History of English Literature. This course comprises : 
(a) Lectures on the development of English literature prior 
to Chaucer ; (Ji) English literature from Chaucer to Dryden ; 
(c) English literature from Anne to Victoria. 

Besides general references published in the Catalogue, 
numerous special references for authors, periods, works, etc., 
are given throughout the course. In addition to the various 
written exercises of the class, five essays are required of each 
student applying for graduation in the B.A. course. 

M.A. Course. — In this course there are occasional lec- 
tures, but in general the exercises of the class are conducted 
by means of questions, conversations, and conference. Read- 
ings are assigned, independent investigations insisted upon 
and written reports required from time to time. The students 
are encouraged to form their own judgments, and to express 
these orally and in writing. References for each author or 
period studied are given, and the free use of the library in this 
and all courses is cordially recommended. There are four and 
a half hours a week. As an essential part of this course a dis- 
sertation showing independent and original work is required. 

Ph.D. Course. — This course will be, in some measure, 
adapted to the needs of the students desiring to pursue it. 
Its purposes will be to cultivate more fully the love of let- 
ters, to encourage independent and scholarly research, and to 
further the art of literary expression. It will include the 
study of some writer, or school of writers, or of some period 
or movement of literature, and will take into consideration 
the political, social, and literary characteristics of the time 
under discussion. 



70 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

In conclusion it may be said that the relations existing 
here between students and professors is so cordial and frank 
that there is no lack of opportunity for personal contact and 
conference. This enables the professor of rhetoric to supple- 
ment the written correction of essays and the general remarks 
before the class by private conversation and individual ad- 
vice. On the other hand, some of the best of these essays 
are published in the University of Virginia Magazine. This 
students' publication and their weekly, College Topics, are ap- 
preciated adjuncts to the work in composition ; while the 
debating societies, in lieu of systematic training in oratory, 
give abundant opportunity for practice in speaking. 

The foundation for the library (now about 52,000 volumes) 
was judiciously laid by the purchase of works of permanent 
and substantial value, and the wisdom which characterized 
the selection made by the first professors has in the main 
been exhibited by later library committees. The library is 
stronger in English literature prior to the nineteenth century 
than it is in the products of this century or of our own coun- 
try, but the deficiencies are fully recognized, and the want is 
being supplied as fast as limited means allow. 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. 

PKOFESSOK DANIEL KILHAM DODGE. 

The course in English at the Illinois State University be- 
ing at present confined to the undergraduate classes, an ac- 
count of the work must differ materially from one dealing 
with the full university curriculum. The aim of such a 
course is, or should be, the development of general culture 
rather than the preparation for later scientific research. It 
aims to be, as far as possible, complete in itself. 

Keeping this end in view, we devote the whole of the first 
year to a general survey of English and American literature, 
dwelling particularly on the great names and the significant 
periods. From this as a centre all the subsequent courses are 
made to radiate. Those students, furthermore, who wish to 
devote only a single year to the subject, are thus given a 
bird's-eye view, which, while necessarily incomplete and su- 
perficial, is the best substitute for an extended course. In 
connection with this subject, as with all others, much outside 
reading is required. 

In the three succeeding years the time is divided as 
equally as possible between two subjects, so that the students 
may have variety without distraction. In the Junior and 
Senior years the line is drawn between language and litera- 
ture, and any one so desiring may elect only one of these. 
As might be expected, the preference in the large majority of 
cases is given to the latter subject. This comparative unpop- 
ularity of language-study suggests the advisability of provid- 
ing a special course of one or two terms in elementary Old 

71 



72 THE TBACHIKG OF ENGLISH. 

English (Anglo-Saxon) grammar and prose for literary stu- 
dents. This is the more desirable as the earliest period of 
our literature cannot satisfactorily be included in the general 
survey, and yet some knowledge of it is essential to a compre- 
hensive knowledge of our literary development. It is also a 
serious question whether Chaucer should be studied in the 
language course, as at present. But, in any case, stress should 
be laid, in an ordinary college course such as ours, upon his 
artistic and ethical qualities, rather than upon the language 
in which these find expression. 

But of far greater importance is the question of how to 
approach Shakespeare. It is bad enough to confine ourselves 
to the grammatical forms of Chaucer ; it is little far from 
criminal to do so with our mighty dramatist. Not that the 
grammatical and linguistic side shall be ignored ; it must, 
however, be reduced to a minimum, as a means to a greater 
end. Eichard Grant White to the contrary, Shakespeare re- 
quires much annotation of various kinds, in order that the 
study may yield its full return. Our ShakesiDeare class de- 
votes two hours a week throughout the year to the detailed 
investigation of four plays — a comedy, an historical play, a 
tragedy, and one of the so-called romances. One hour a week 
during the first term is devoted to the pre-Shakespearian 
drama, and the same time during the last two terms to the 
reading of eight or ten of Shakespeare's plays in the order 
of Furnivall's chronological table, bearing chiefly in mind 
the development of the author's genius. In these Hamlet is 
invariably included. Free discussion by the members of 
the class is heartily encouraged. Special stress is laid upon 
the different conceptions of characters and situations by 
leading actors, and upon the stage requirements of the plays, 
• — ^the student being never allowed to forget that Shake- 
speare w^rote primarily for the stage and not for the closet. 
Textual criticism is treated even more sparingly than gram- 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. 73 

niatical study, its proper place being in the advanced courses. 
The results of this method of Shakespeare study have been 
very encouraging, many of the pupils seeming to develop from 
it a real love for the subject, which it is to be hoped may be 
carried still further outside of the college walls. 

The other courses offered are the prose of the nineteenth 
century, the poetry of the nineteenth century, — special stress 
being laid in the former on the novel, in the latter on Words- 
worth, Browning, and Tennyson, — eighteenth century litera- 
ture, the literary study of history, and Old and Early English, 
including Chaucer. There is also a special course of one 
year for scientific and engineering students, consisting of a 
general survey of the literature, English grammar, and the 
critical study of scientific prose. 

In addition to the instruction in language and literature, 
which is elective, a certain amount of work is required in 
rhetoric and theme-writing of all members of the university, 
the object of which is the practical one of endeavoring to give 
training in the use of English. Much freedom is left to the 
students in the choice of subjects, and satisfactory articles in 
the college paper and the various college societies are accepted 
as equivalents for the regular class themes. This latter plan 
has yielded admirable resiilts this year, the first of its trial. 

It may be added that while, as has been stated, no attempt 
has yet been made to offer systematic instruction in English 
for graduates, provision is made for all those desiring to pur- 
sue higher studies in this subject. The time is not far dis- 
tant, it is hoped, when this deficiency will be remedied. 



ENGLISH AT LAFAYETTE COLLEGE. 

PROFESSOR F. A. MARCH. 

It is thought to be somewhat of a specialty in the 
Lafayette teaching of the English, that the professors in all 
departments take part in it. The theory is that the main 
cause of mistakes in speaking and writing English is ignorance 
of the meaning of words. Our grammar is simple, but we 
catch up our words without thought, and utter them again in 
the same way. On the athletic field we do not know walking 
from running, nor at the banquet pie from pudding. When 
we undertake to talk about any scientific subject, the expert 
detects us instantly ; we call whales fishes, mix up sewage and 
sewerage, and use force, energy, and power as if they were all 
the same. 

An earnest attempt is made at Lafayette to train the 
students in each department to write on subjects connected 
with it in the words and phrases current among experts. The 
professors in each department are, of course, authorities. 
Every student is required to hand in two papers a term ; there 
are three terms in the college year. The professors give out 
subjects which demand research and description in their own 
departments, and much time is spent by many of them in 
inculcating not only clear-cut meaning, but also the etymology 
of scientific terms. They find the sesquipedalia of the sci- 
ences cannot be held in memory with precision unless their 
elements are distinctly perceived. This leads to some knowl- 
edge of scientific philology, and of accurate spelling. The 
students in the chemical laboratory under Professor Hart, the 

74 



ENGLISH AT LAFAYETTE COLLEGE. 75 

president of the Chemical Section of the American Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Sciences, use the rules of the 
Association for spelling and pronunciation ; they know when 
to write the termination -in, and when to write -ine ; they are 
not to be caught blundering with chlor'ui or quinin, hydrld or 
oxid, or sulfur. The amended spellings recommended by the 
joint action of the English and American Philological Societies 
and given in the Century Dictionary are accepted as correct 
in college papers, as well as the common spellings in Webster 
and Worcester. 

This special training in the use of words is but a single 
item in the regular work of learning to read and write the 
English language correctly which is carried on at Lafayette as 
at other colleges. The professors of foreign languages recog- 
nize that translation into English is training in English, and 
written translations are required avowedly in the interest of 
English. There are special studies of rhetoric in text-books 
and by lectures, and all the staple of rhetorical and elocution- 
ary practice. Trench on The SUidy of Words is a required 
study in all departments two hours a week during the first 
term of Sophomore year. It is much relished by students of 
all kinds, and an appetizer for solid courses of scientific 
philology. The class of 1883 established a prize for the best 
examination in it. 

Over and above all this is the study of English in litera- 
ture. We find the statement in the histories of Lafayette 
that the college had " European recognition " for its study of 
English before the present historical and literary courses were 
known at other colleges. The Lafayette courses were estab- 
lished with the maxim that " English should be studied like 
Greek." A special professorship was established co-ordinate 
with the Greek and Latin professorships, with the arrange- 
ment emphasized that the professor was not to have the rhet- 
oric, and general theme-writing, and other like duties, but was 



76 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

to handle English classic authors with his classes, study Chau- 
cer, Shakespeare, and Webster, after the same methods as 
Homer and Demosthenes. This was a pretty precise descrip- 
tion fifty years ago. Now there are many ways of studying 
Greek, and all of them often scamped in our universities. It 
meant then thorough work. Teachers were fond of repeating 
after Dr. Arnold of Rugby, " What a treat it would be to 
teach Shakespeare to a good class of young Greeks in regener- 
ate Athens ; to dwell upon him line by line and word by word, 
and so to get all his pictures and thoughts leisurely into one's 
mind, till I verily think one would, after a time, almost give 
out light in the dark, after having been steeped, as it were, in 
such an atmosphere of brilliance." 

The Lafayette courses are still constant to this central 
idea. They are primarily devoted to the study of the language 
as it is found in masterpieces of literature, the immediate aim 
being the interpretation of these masterpieces, the rethinking 
of the thoughts of master minds, and storing the memory 
with their words. Four hours a week during two terms, 
Junior year, are spent with a professor in recitations ; two ad- 
ditional hours are allotted to the preparation for each recita- 
tion. Three of the recitation hours each week are occupied 
in the Arnold fashion, dwelling line by line and word by word 
upon worthy passages. In a play of Shakespeare, for example, 
— and one term is regularly devoted to a play of Shake- 
speare, — a scene, a short scene, may be given out for a morn- 
ing's study. A considerable part of it will be read rapidly, 
or the gist of it given in a few words, and most of the hour 
will be devoted to a few lines selected as worthy of thorough 
study. Any obsolete words or phrases, or singular construc- 
tions, will be explained ; but the secret of Shakespeare's 
power is not to be found in these. The words which are 
bearers of special meaning or feeling are usually familiar 
words. In searching for their power and charm, the stu- 



ENGLISH AT LAFAYETTE COLLEGE. 77 

dent will trace them through all the places where Shake- 
speare uses them, using the Concordance to bring them all 
together. He will use the historical dictionary to learn what 
associations had gathered around them in the earlier ages, be- 
ginning sometimes in Beowulf, and accumulating as they pass 
to Alfred, to Chaucer, to Tyndale, to Spenser, and are used by 
each with some happy turn or in some musical rhythm. He 
will often find that the peculiar meaning in Shakespeare be- 
gins with him, and then it will be pleasant to trace it in later 
authors, repeated in quotation or allusion until it becomes per- 
haps the most familiar meaning. All the resources of phi- 
lology, the comparative study of languages and literatures, 
rhetoric and oratory, prosody and rhythmic art, psychology, 
and biography, may be drawn upon, and all available peda- 
gogical arts used to lead the student livelily to rethink the 
thought and perceive and feel and remember the beauty of the 
language. In this way students come to rejoice in these 
noble passages, and remember them forever. They are thus 
provided with the very words to guide their higher thought, 
and with forms of graceful speech which prompt them to 
easy utterances of courtesy and affection and devotion. 

Three of the four hours a week with the professor are 
used in this way ; the fourth is given to a kind of symposium 
or seminary. Some topic of research belonging to the subject 
is given out for an essay, which all the class are required to 
hand in. The hour is spent in the reading of essays and criti- 
cism of them, and further discussion of the topic carried on by 
the class under the prompting and guidance of the professor. 
One such hour may be given to the life and environment of 
the author ; another to the plot of the play, if one of Shake- 
speare's plays is to be studied ; others to critical discussion of 
particular scenes as wholes and as proper parts of the play ; 
others to notable characters in the play. There may be phi- 
lological papers on the language of the play and of the poet ; 



78 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

papers on the originality of the work, how much of it is 
Shakespeare ; reports of the criticism of particular great 
critics ; outlines of other related works. 

The most stimulating and fertile topics are simple. The 
spelling of Shakespeare's name is a good subject for begin- 
ners ; it opens into a good many interesting and useful facts, 
and thoughts about the nature of evidence, the history and 
rules of naming, the literary orthography of proper names, 
and the like. Another good introduction to research of this 
sort is an etymological examination of the language of an 
author, to ascertain what percentages of his words are derived 
from Anglo-Saxon, what from Latin, Greek, and other 
languages, and to discuss the reason for them. This includes 
the preparation of statistical tables of the numbers of words 
in selected passages of the author, and also in certain other 
authors of different dates and kinds with whom comparison is 
to be made. Gejieral reading is necessary to select the pas- 
sages. Every word in them must be looked up in the 
dictionary unless its etymology is known before. This is 
work. In order to explain the different percentages in differ- 
ent passages of the author, it is necessary to consider what 
subjects and styles favor the use of Anglo-Saxon words, what 
of Latin, or Greek. In comparing him with other writers of 
his own age and country, his immediate environment, his 
friends, hia. audience, his biography, must be known. In 
comparing him with similar writers of other periods, the 
habits of different ages, and their varying linguistic condi- 
tions, must be examined. A proper method of preparing such 
an essay having been given the student, he will be able to 
do, and will be led on to do, much good work of his own in 
applying the method to any particular author. 

We used to have lively work of research, frequent peering 
into all corners of the library, and rejoicing in exploiting 
fresh mines of facts ; but bibliographic indexing is now so 



ENGLISH AT LAFAYETTE COLLEGE. 79 

copious, — Poole's Indexes in the vau, — and the librarians 
are so at the service of everybody, and omniscient, that re- 
search begins and ends too often with asking the librarian to 
hand over everything there is on the topic, and point out the 
pages. And the essays are apt to show plainly enough that 
they were written with the books open before the writers, 
as Shakespeare had North's Plutarch when he wrote Julius 
Ca'sar. The essays can hardly claim the credit of research, but 
often have merits which students rank higher than research, 
and make good material for collisions of memory and wit 
combats at the symposia. 

All this is required work. For Shakespeare there is also 
a prize examination open to all who have finished the required 
work. This is general, covering his life, character, all his 
works, from any points of view which the examiner may 
choose at the examination. The professor is content with 
questions which call for direct knowledge of the works and 
reflection upon them ; such as naming plays and asking 
for a description of them, and asking which is the best and 
why ; when they were written and the evidence for the dates ; 
naming persons and asking for their characters and action ; 
giving quotations and asking where they are found, and the 
like simplicities ; but examining committees are apt to confront 
the student with the profoundest questions in psychology and 
history which the Germans have evolved. The winning of 
this prize is esteemed one of the highest college honors. 

There are two divisions of the students who do not take 
courses in Greek and Latin. These take courses of English, 
German, and French, which are so taught as to supply simi- 
lar linguistic training to that obtained from the Latin and 
Greek. They study term by term some English classic just 
as the others do their Latin classic, giving it four recitation 
hours a week. Authors commonly selected are Bunyan, 
Spenser, Chaucer, Bacon. With a general method such as has 



80 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

been spoken of in connection with Shakespeare, philological 
topics are taken up in progressive order, term after term, such 
as to prepare these students to unite with students of Latin 
and Greek in the second term of the Junior year, and go on 
with the philological study of English. Four lessons a week 
in Anglo-Saxon for two terms are required of all students ex- 
cept technicals. They are given near the end of the linguistic 
courses required in college when the students have studied 
their German, Erench, Latin, Greek, nearly to their comple- 
tion. The West Saxon as it appears in the principal literary 
works is i;)i"esented as a classical language, and the whole 
time is devoted to it as to a sister speech of classical Latin. 
It is studied, we say, like Greek. The class begin to read at 
once extracts from the Gospels. They also learn the gram- 
mar, the rules for pronunciation, and practise reading the text 
aloud. They learn the paradigms, and rules of syntax, so as 
to parse rapidly, declining and inflecting freely. They learn 
the rules of letter change, a selected set of them. They 
already know from their other language studies Grimm's law 
and the like. They learn for continual use the paradigms 
and syntax, and the common phonetic changes within the 
West Saxon, and from West Saxon to English. The exami- 
nation at the end of the first term of Anglo-Saxon is almost 
wholly devoted to these matters, and it is known from the 
fi^rst that they must be learned in order to pass without 
conditions. 

In the second term Anglo-Saxon prosody is added to the 
grammar work, but the time is given mainly to reading Anglo- 
Saxon authors as we read modern English authors in this 
course, and to throwing light upon modern English words 
and idioms by connecting them with their ancient forms. Be- 
sides the class examinations, a prize is offered to those who 
complete the courses for the best general examination in Eng- 
lish before Chaucer ; and an additional optional course is 



ENGLISH AT LAFAYETTE COLLEGE. 81 

given to prepare for examination questions upon tlie deduction 
of the Anglo-Saxon forms from originals in tlie parent 
speech and other comparative grammar, and for additional 
reading, and literary and biographic and bibliographic study 
in connection with it. 

The chief use of study of English before Chaucer to the 
American college graduate, the person who used to be known 
as the gentleman and scholar, is to help him to better under- 
standing and mastery of English in Chaucer, and since 
Chaucer. The literary charm and power of the works which 
have survived from the earlier period is slight in compari- 
son with that of the old masters of Greece and Rome, and of 
the still greater modern authors in our own language and 
other modern languages, who mould the thoughts of modern 
men. It would seem best, therefore, to devote that moderate 
portion of time which ought to be given to this study in col- 
lege to a few typical specimens of Anglo-Saxon, and to 
the comparative study of their idioms in relation to modern 
English, so as to fix in memory illustrative originals to guide 
and strengthen our speech, No one but an incipient professor 
of languages can well afford to spend his days and nights for 
long periods of his crowded college life in studying books of 
specimens of all the various early dialects of those groping 
centuries. 

This series of required studies for the whole class is con- 
.tinued during the second term of Senior year by two exercises 
a week, with weekly written papers from each student 
arranged for the general study of some author, and the writ- 
ing of an elaborate article, as if for a quarterly review, which 
must contain a discussion of the language of the author. 
AVith the work of this term goes another prize. The best 
work is done when the author selected is an American. 
Students find their own life and thought depicted in the 
American authors. The language is their own. They are 



82 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

specially arawn to them. In the college reading-room the 
American periodicals are worn to tatters, while the English 
publications, which were the main reading of students of 
the last generation, lie in fair covers, looking fresh from the 
binder. Franklin, Bryant, Irving, Webster, Emerson, Long- 
fellow, Lowell, Mrs. Stowe, Whittier, Holmes, have been 
handled with most hearty and sympathetic admiration and 
intelligence. One of the traditional high-days of Lafayette 
is that on which Mr. Bryant made the public presentation 
of this prize for the best study of his own works to Mr. J. 
W. Bright, of '77, now professor of English philology in 
Johns Hopkins University, his torch still burning as he runs 
in the front. 

During the same term a rapid general survey of Eng- 
lish literature is given with a compendium, class discussion, 
and conversations, two hours a week. And four hours a week 
of the last term of the Senior year are given to a review and 
summary of the linguistic side of the college studies in con- 
nection with Professor Whitney's Language and the Study of 
Language, a required study. 

Lafayette is a college of some three hundred students, and 
does not advertise university courses. It receives, however, 
graduate students, and there are always some such pursuing 
English studies. A few continue them, as major courses, far 
enough to earn a Ph.D. It might be said, therefore, that we 
have all the courses in English, the description of which fills 
so many pages of the great university catalogues. There are 
two professors : F. A. March, professor of English and 
of comparative philology ; and F. A. March, Jr., professor of 
English literature. 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA. 

PKOFESSOB EDWARD E. HALE, JR.^ 

The State University of Iowa has one professor of English 
and one instructor, and offers during the present year eight 
courses. All but one of these are two-hour courses, making a 
total of seventeen hours, the actual teaching time being some- 
what more, owing to division in classes. Of these eight 
courses, four are required. In the Freshman year a choice is 
given between courses I. and II. ; in the Sophomore year, be- 
tween III. and IV. There are about two hundred and fifty 
students registered in the various courses, counting perhaps 
twenty names twice. Besides these courses, the University 
offers two courses in elocution and a good deal of private 
work under a special instructor, and for next year it offers 
a course in debating under the joint supervision of the pro- 
fessors of political science, philosophy, and English. But 
these latter matters hardly come within the scope of the pre- 
sent series of articles. 

In the required work of the English Department, there are 
two lines offered to the student. Courses I. and III. are 
strictly rhetorical in character, being the only courses in 
rhetoric that we give. In these courses our idea is not ex- 
actly to teach formal rhetoric as the art is usually presented 
in the older text-books, but rather to present the subject in a 
constructive way, according to the general line of recent 
thought on the subject. We try to habituate the student to 

1 Now Professor of Rlietoric in Union College. 
83 



84 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

writing (as well as possible, of course, but criticism is not our 
first aim),to give him practice in thinking over his material 
and putting it into good form, to give him exercise in the dif- 
ferent modes of presentation. Such is the tendency of most 
of the handbooks on rhetoric, and of most of the discussions 
of the matter published in the last few years. 

The alternative courses offered the Freshmen and Sopho- 
mores are literary with a rhetorical flavor. In the first year 
a number of prose authors are read, with comment on their 
style. In the second, the class uses Professor Minto's admi- 
rable Manual. It seems that there are always a number of 
students who make very little of rhetoric as usually taught ; 
we want, in these courses, to see whether they can do as well 
by reading good authors as their classmates do by more direct 
practice in means and methods. In all four courses there is a 
good deal of essay writing. But, as far as we can see at 
present, the direct work will give the better results.^ 

In the elective courses, we draw the line sharply between 
linguistic work and literary. If it were practicable, I should 
like to divide further, giving courses devoted particularly to 
literary history and to the interpretation of literature. As it 
is, however, these last subjects are treated in the same courses. 
In linguistics we give this year a course in Old English and 
another on historical English grammar. But these courses 
(and a course in Middle English, as well, that has been given) 
are not favorites with the student body, and are only given 
in alternate years. 

For courses in literature, besides the Freshman course (II.) 
described above, and the course in English prose (IV.) there is 
given this year a course of lectures on English poetry. The 
subject of this course is changed each year, so that the student 
who wishes may in three years get a fairly complete view of 

1 Our recent experience leads us to drop these courses as required work, 
leaving only the two courses in rhetoric. Course IV. will be retained as an 
elective. 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA. 85 

English poetry from Chaucer down, inchiding a good deal of 
work on Shakespeare. 

A seminary, in the stricter American sense of a research 
course, we do not have. We do, however, give a course for 
seniors and graduates, which bears a fairly close resemblance 
in character to the seminary of a smaller German university. 
The work of this course is generally concerned with some as- 
pects of criticism, and we follow sometimes one method, some- 
times another. I have gone over a text-book, or lectured, or 
given out topics for original work. The main idea is that by 
means of the closer personal relation possible through the 
informalities of the seminary, the spirit of self-reliance and 
independence shall be developed in the members. 

It will easily be seen from this sketch of our work that the 
basis of our method is the cutting our coat somewhat accord- 
ing to our cloth. We have a good many students, and there 
are certain things that must be done : beyond is the great 
number of things that may be done. We try to compass the 
necessities first, and of the possibilities we grasp at as many 
as circumstances will permit. We have two main ideas : first, 
to give plenty of opportunity to those who wish to gain a good 
English style ; and second, to encourage a feeling and taste 
for good literature. It is a pity that we cannot develop fur- 
ther than we do the more scientific aspects of linguistic study 
and of criticism and literary history. But these are matters 
which for the present we have to leave almost untouched. 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVEKSITY OF CHICAGO. 

PEOFESSOR ALBERT H. TOLMAIST. 

All persons who believe that literature is at once the 
greatest of the fine arts and the one most available for general 
study must be interested in the reports that The Dial has 
published concerning the work in English at various American 
colleges and universities. 

The English department is the largest one in the Univer- 
sity of Chicago, and very generous provision has been made 
for it. During the three calendar quarters from October 1, 
1893, to June 30, 1894, twelve instructors have given forty- 
eight courses of instruction in English. Three of these have 
been in required theme-writing ; the remaining forty-five 
courses have each called for four or five hours of class-room 
work a week for twelve weeks, except that a few Sendiiar 
classes have met only two hours a week. During this time, 
849 students, counting by class registration, have taken regu- 
lar courses in English ; and 204 more have taken required 
theme-writing. The number of different persons taking these 
courses has been 425, not including any who take only re- 
quired theme- writing. In this number are included 51 gradu- 
ates of colleges. The amount of graduate work in the English 
department is continually increasing. 

The following persons will give instruction in English at 
this University during the year extending from July 1, 1894, 
to June 30, 1895 : Professor W. C. "Wilkinson, D.D. ; Uni- 
versity Extension Professor E. G. Moulton, Ph.D. ; Professor 
L. A. Sherman, Ph.D., of the University of Nebraska (at the 

86 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 87 

University of Chicago only for tlie summer quarter of '94) ; 
University Extension Associate Professor N. Butler, A.M. ; 
Associate Professor W. D. McClintock, A.M. ; Assistant Pro- 
fessor r. A. Blackburn, Ph.D. ; Assistant Professor M. F. 
Crow, Ph.D. ; Assistant Professor A. H. Tolman, Ph.D. ; In- 
structor R. W. Herrick, A.B. ; Instructor E. M. Lovett, A.B. ; 
Tutor E. H. Lewis, Ph.D. ; Assistant Myra Reynolds, A.M.; 
Docent O. L. Triggs, A.B. ; Honorary Fellow F. I. Carpenter, 
A.B. ; Honorary Fellow H. C. Brainard, Ph.B. (Total fifteen.) 
All of these, except Professor Sherman, Miss Reynolds, and 
Mrs. Brainard, have been teaching here during the past year. 
Ten of those in the above list will give their entire time to 
the work of instruction ; five only a part of their time. 

One course in English literature, and only one, is required 
of all the students. This must be taken during the first year 
of undergraduate work. It seems desirable that the pupil be 
introduced promptly to the treasures of his own literature ; 
it is well that he should learn early that the condensed milk 
of text-books cannot suffice for his mental nutriment, — that 
all the fact-books and reasoning books, taken together, cannot 
accomplish his intellectual salvation, cannot give him a liberal 
education. This required course is an introduction to the 
study of literature. It gives a brief outline of the history of 
English literature, together with studies in the chief literary 
forms — the drama, narrative poetry, lyric poetry, the novel, 
the essay. It may seem to some that more than one quarter 
should he given to this work, but it is the policy of the Uni- 
versity to have as few required courses as practicable. Some 
election is allowed during the second year of college work ; 
after the second year there are at present no required courses 
•whatever. 

Of the elective courses in English literature, each calls for 
four or five hours of class-room work a week for an entire 
quarter; except that some of the Seminar classes meet only 



88 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

two hours per week. Many important authors and subjects 
are necessarily omitted from the work of any single year. A 
condensed list of these elective courses for the coming year 
is as follows : Old English literature (Blackburn) ; Middle 
English readings (Blackburn) ; the works of Chaucer (Tol- 
man) ; the rise of the English drama and its history to 1560 
(Tolman) ; the history of the drama in England from 1560 to 
1642 (Crow) ; Elizabethan prose (Crow) ; Elizabethan seminary 
(autumn, winter, and spring quarters, Crow) ; the sources 
of Shakespeare's plays (Crow); Shakespeare seminary , — those 
plays in the First Folio which have been thought to be of com- 
posite authorship, etc. (Tolman) ; the interpretation of repre- 
sentative plays of Shakespeare (McClintock) ; studies in the 
interpretation of Shakespeare (Sherman) ; critical examina- 
tion of the text of Hamlet (Brainard) ; Elizabethan poetry 
(Carpenter) ; the poetry of Spenser (Carpenter) ; Spenser's 
Faerie Queene (Moulton) ; Milton seminary (McClintock) ; the 
beginnings of the classical movement in English literature 
(Reynolds) ; the beginnings of the romantic movement (Mc- 
Clintock) ; the romantic poets, 1780 to 1830 (McClintock) ; 
the poetry of Wordsworth (Reynolds) ; essayists of the nine- 
teenth century (Butler) ; nineteenth century literary move- 
ments (Triggs) ; Arnold and Tennyson (Triggs) ; American 
literature in outline (Triggs) ; English poetry in the nine- 
teenth century (Lovett) ; themes and principles of treatment 
in novel, poem, and drama (Sherman) ; the history of English 
literary criticism (summer and spring quarters, McClintock) ; 
the elements of literature (summer and spring quarters, 
McClintock) ; theory and practice of literary interpretation 
(Moulton). 

The university extension work in English literature falls 
especially to Professors Moulton and Butler. Since October 
1, 1893, Associate Professor Butler has served most success- 
fully as director of the University Extension Department, 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVEKSITY OF CHICAGO. 89 

and has given sixty extension lectures. Since January 1, 
1894, Professor Moulton has conducted two courses of regular 
class work at the University, and has delivered ninety-six 
extension lectures. Ko other American institution does so 
much in this line of work as the University of Chicago. 
Many courses of lecture-studies in English literature are 
offered for the coming year. It is not the policy of the Uni- 
versity to encourage extension lecturing on the part of the 
regular class-room force, though such courses are given under 
special circumstances. 

The masterpieces of our literature are studied at the Uni- 
versity of Chicago primarily as works of literary art. If one 
says that '' English should be studied as Greek is," then it 
must be asked. How should Greek be studied ? To inves- 
tigate every possible question that can be raised in connection 
with a piece of literature is to be thorough indeed ; but is it 
not possible, in being thorough, to be thoroughly wrong ? An 
artistic whole, like a vital one, is something indefinitely greater 
than the sum of its parts. We should not fail in artistic 
study to make the whole the centre of interest. The study of 
the most charming of the English classics has too often been 
made a mere starting-point for laborious investigations into 
antiquities, history, geography, etymology, phonetics, the 
history of the English language, and general linguistics. The 
stones of learning have been doled out to students hungry for 
the bread of literature. Literary masterpieces should be 
studied chiefly, it seems to me, for their beauty. It is because 
of their charm, their beauty, that they have immortality ; it 
is only because of this that we study them at all. If the stu- 
dent is not helped to enter into their beauty and to love them 
for it, the teaching Avould seem to be wrong somewhere. No 
study can be too minute and careful which aids one in gaining 
a vital appreciation of a great masterpiece. An unfailing 
source of rest and refreshment, a life-long process of self-edu- 



90 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

cation, great ideals of life and character, — to all of these the 
student should gain access through the study of English 
literature. 

For the most part the literary and linguistic lines of study 
are kept apart at this University ; but not entirely. Linguis- 
tic questions are sometimes vital to the interpretation of a 
passage ; for example, the word " weird " in the phrase " the 
.weird sisters" in Macbeth calls for explanation, and will 
repay the most careful study. Even in a literary study of 
Chaucer it is necessary to pay careful attention to his lan- 
guage. I must not be understood as objecting to the most 
thorough study of the English language. It is a fair question 
whether a certain amount of such study should not be required 
of all college students. According to a great law of educa- 
tion, "the law of the nearest," the history of the English 
tongue is the most fitting and helpful introduction to the gen- 
eral study of the life and growth of language. Only in the 
mother-tongue does the student have access to the actual phe- 
nomena of speech. Here one boundary of linguistic investi- 
gation — the terTTiinus ad quern — is the present form of the 
language ; and this meets his ear at every turn. The present 
life and growth of one's native tongue can be studied at first 
hand, and is the great source of light for the study of lan- 
guage-change in the past. Eew recent movements in education 
have been more marked than the increased attention given to 
the historical study of English. 

In addition to the literary courses already mentioned. 
Assistant Professor Blackburn offers nine courses in Old Eng- 
lish, the history of the English language, etc., for the year 
beginning July 1, 1894. 

Every student is required to take a course in rhetoric and 
English composition at the beginning of his undergraduate 
work. Theme-writing is required throughout the first two 
years. The instructors in rhetoric expect the students to find 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 91 

the subjects for tlieir themes, or compositions, in the various 
other departments where their studies lie. The principles 
and rules of rhetoric, they hold, help a man to treat a subject 
appropriately ; but he must find some subject himself, or one 
must be found for him. A list of topics, together with help- 
ful references, is furnished to the classes. These topics are 
recommended by the instructors in the various departments 
in which the students are working, and usually have some 
vital connection with the subjects that are discussed in the 
class-room. Fourteen elective courses in rhetorical study are 
offered for the coming year by Messrs. Wilkinson, Herrick, 
Lovett, and Lewis. 

Every college graduate should be able to prove that he is 
liberally educated by the grace and skill with which he ex- 
presses his thoughts. Much practice in writing is required 
of every student who takes his college course in the Univer- 
sity of Chicago. The University of Chicago has fifteen de- 
partmental clubs ; these are united in an organization called 
The University Union. Original papers are read before the 
English Club by instructors, students, and invited guests. 
Three clubs are appointed each quarter to present papers at 
a public meeting of the University Union. A prize of fifty 
dollars goes to the student chosen by competition to represent 
each club. 

Two so-called "Senior" fellowships, or four "Junior" fel- 
lowships, are assigned to the Department of English. These 
are granted to college graduates of exceptional ability who 
plan to do advanced work in English. Owing to the large 
number of applicants, four " Junior " fellowships have been 
awarded for the coming year. Each of these gives to the 
holder $320 in cash. Two other fellowships for this Depart- 
ment have been provided for this year by private generosity. 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF INDIANA. 

PROFESSOR MARTIN W. SAMPSON. 

In September, 1893, the English department of the Uni- 
versity of Indiana was completely reorganized. Six men — a 
professor, and five instructors — were appointed to carry on 
the work. The present course is our attempt to meet exist- 
ing conditions. Each department must offer a full course of 
study leading to the bachelor's degree. Our students gradu- 
ate in Greek, in mathematics, in sociology, in English, or in 
any one of the dozen other departments, with the uniform 
degree of A.B. About a third of the student's time is given 
to required studies, a third to the special work of the chosen 
department, and a third to elective studies. The department 
of English, then, is required to offer a four years' course of 
five hours a week ; as a matter of fact, it offers considerably 
more. 

The English courses fall into three distinct natural groups 
• — language, composition, and literature, — in each of which 
work may be pursued for four or more years. One year of 
this work is required of all students ; the rest is elective. 
With two exceptions, all our courses run throughout the 
year. 

The linguistic work is under the charge of Mr. Harris. 
The elementary courses are a beginning class in Old English 
prose, and one in the history of the language. Then follow a 
course in Chaucer, the mystery plays, and Middle English 
romances and lyrics ; an advanced course in Old English 
poetry, including a seminary study of Beowulf } the history 

92 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF INDIANA. 93 

of Old and Middle English literature ; and a course in histor- 
ical English grammar, which makes a special examination of 
forms and constructions in modern prose. In these classes 
the intention is to lead the student into independent investi- 
gation as soon as he is pre^sared for it. 

In composition, the work is as completely practical as we 
can make it. Writing is learned by writing papers, each one 
of which is corrected and rewritten. There are no recitations 
in " rhetoric." The bugbear known generally in our colleges 
as Freshman English is now a part of our entrance require- 
ment, and university instruction in composition begins with 
those fortunate students who have some little control of their 
native language when a pen is between their fingers. We are 
still obliged, however, to supply instruction to students con- 
ditioned in entrance English, and the conditioned classes 
make the heaviest drain upon the instructors' time. The 
first regular class receives students who write clearly and can 
compose good paragraphs. The subjects of the year's work 
are narration, description, exposition. In the next year's 
class, an attempt is made to stimulate original production in 
prose and verse. A certain amount of criticism upon contem- 
porary writing enters into this course — the object being to 
point out what is good in (for example) current magazines 
and reviews, and thus to hold before the student an ideal not 
altogether impossible of attainment. A young writer con- 
fronted with the virtues and defects of Macaulay and De 
Quincey is likelier to be discouraged or made indifferent, 
than inspired, as far as his own style is concerned. If he is 
shown wherein a " Brief " in The Dial is better than his own 
review of the book, he is in a fair way to improve. And so 
with the sketches, stories, and even poems. Of course cur- 
rent magazine writing is not held up as ideal literature ; nor, 
on the other hand, is the production of literature deemed a 
possible part of college study. The work in this branch of 



94 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

Englisli is rounded off by a class for students who intend to 
teach composition. The theory of rhetoric is studied, and 
something of its history ; school texts in rhetoric are ex- 
amined ; and finally the class learns tlie first steps in teaching 
by taking charge of elementary classes. 

In the literary courses the required work comes first. 
Many students take no more English than these prescribed 
three terms of five hours a week ; many others continue the 
study ; and the problem has been to arrange the course so as 
to create in the former class the habit of careful and sym' 
pathetic reading, and at the same time to give the latter class 
a safe foundation for future work. The plan is to read in 
the class, with the greatest attention to detail, one or more 
characteristic works of the authors chosen (>Scott, Shake- 
speare, Thackeray, George Eliot), and to require as outside 
work a good deal of rapid collateral reading. This class and 
most of the composition classes are conducted by Messrs. 
Sembower, Thomas, Chamberlin, and Stempel. 

The course in English prose style begins in the second 
year, and follows the method of the late Professor Minto. 
Macaulay, De Quincey, Carlyle, Ruskin, and Arnold are the 
writers taken up. A course in American authors finds then a 
place. Then comes a course in poetry : Coleridge, Words- 
worth, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Browning. Complete 
editions of all the poets, except the last, are used, and the 
year's work is meant to serve as an introduction to the critical 
reading of poetry. A separate course of one term in metrics 
accompanies the poetry course. In the drama there is a full 
course in Shakespeare and other Elizabethans (which presup- 
poses the first year's work in Shakespeare), and also a course 
in classical drama, Greek and French, studied in translation. 
The dramatic courses begin with a discussion of Professor 
Moulton's books on Shakespeare, and on the Greek drama, 
and then take up independent study of as many plays as pos- 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF INDIANA. 95 

sible. The last regular course is the literary seminary, which 
during the coming year will investigate, as far as the library 
will allow, the rise of romantic poetry in England. Special 
research courses are arranged for students who wish to pur- 
sue their English studies. It may be added that, in order to 
graduate in English, work must be taken in each of the three 
groups of the Department. 

It has been my effort, naturally, to arrange the courses in 
a logical order, advancing from the simple to the more diffi- 
cult, and covering as wide a range as is consistent with thor- 
oughness ; this latter quality being an ideal kept always in 
view — would we might say as confidently, in reach. And as 
to the method of conducting classes, each instructor teaches 
as he pleases ; any man's best method is the one that appeals 
to him at the time. 

And now, as to that vexed question. How shall literature 
be taught ? Class-room methods vary in the Department, but 
our ultimate object is the same. The aim, then, in teaching 
literature is, I think, to give the student a thorough under- 
standing of what he reads, and the ability to read sympathet- 
ically and understandingly in the future. If we use the 
phrase " to read intelligently," we name the object of every 
instructor's teaching. But in the definition of this ideal we 
come upon so many differences of opinion that in reality it 
means not one thing but a thousand. To touch upon a few 
obsolescent notions — to one teacher it meant to fill the stu- 
dent full of biography and literary history ; to another it 
meant to put the student in possession of what the best 
critics, or the worst ones, had said about the artist and his 
work ; to another it meant making a pother over numberless 
petty details of the text (a species of literary parsing) ; to 
another it meant harping on the moral purposes of the poet 
or novelist ; anything, in short, except placing the student 
face to face with the work itself, and acting as his spectacles 
when his eyesight was blurred. 



96 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

The negations of all these theories have become the com- 
monplaces of to-day — truisms among a certain class of 
teachers. To repeat those principles that have thus become 
truisms of theory (not yet of practice — the difference is pro- 
found), we have first the truth that the study of literature 
means the study of literature, not of biography nor of literary 
history (incidentally of vast importance), not of grammar, not 
of etymology, not of anything except the works themselves, 
viewed as their creators wrote them, viewed as art, as tran- 
scripts of humanity, — not as logic, not as psychology, not as 
ethics. 

The second point is that we are concerned with the study 
of literature. And here is the parting of the ways. Grant- 
ing we concern ourselves with pure literature only, just how 
shall we concern ourselves with it ? There are many 
methods, but these methods are of two kinds only : the 
method of the professor who preaches the beauty of the poet's 
utterance, and the method of him who makes his student sys- 
tematically approach the work as a work of art, find out the 
laws of its existence as such, the mode of its manifestation, 
the meaning it has, and the significance of that meaning — 
in brief, to have his students interpret the work of art and 
ascertain what makes it just that and not something else. 
Literature, as every reader profoundly feels, is an appeal to 
all sides of our nature ; but I venture to insist that as a study 
— and this is the point at issue — it must be approached 
intellectually. And here the purpose of literature, and the 
purpose of studying literature, must be sharply discriminated. 
The question is not, Apprehending literature, how shall I let 
it influence me ? The question most definitely is. How shall 
I learn to apprehend literature, that thereby it may influence 
me? 

As far as class study is concerned, the instructors must 
draw the line once for all between the liking for reading and 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF INDIANA. 97' 

the understanding of literature. To all who assert that the 
study of literature must take into account the emotions, that 
it must remember questions of taste, I can only answer 
impatiently, Yes, I agree ; but between taking them into ac- 
count, and making them the prime object of the study, there 
is the difference between day and night. It is only by recog- 
nizing this difference that we professors of English cease to 
make ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of those who see into 
the heart of things, that we can at all successfully disprove 
Freeman's remark — caustic and four-fifths true — " English 
literature is only chatter about Shelley." As a friend of mine 
puts it : To understand literature is a matter of study, and 
may be taught in the class-room ; to love literature is a 
matter of character, and can never be taught in a class-room. 
The professor who tries chiefly to make his students love 
literature wastes his energy for the sake of a few students 
who would love poetry anyway, and sacrifices the majority of 
his class, who are not yet ripe enough to love it. The profes- 
sor who tries chiefly to make his students understand litera- 
ture will give them something to incorporate into their 
characters. For it is the peculiar grace of literature that 
whoso understands it loves it. It becomes to him a perma- 
nent possession, not a passing thrill. 

To revert to our University work in English, we have been 
confronted with a peculiar local condition. Some time ago, 
Professor Hale of the University of Iowa said in The Dial, that 
in the West there was comparatively little feeling for style. 
That certainly applies to the Indiana students I have met. 
But the lowans, it was my experience, were willing to study 
style and develop their latent feeling. Widespread in In- 
diana, however, I find the firm conviction that style is un- 
worthy of serious consideration. A poem is simply so much 
thought ; its " form-side," to use a favorite student expres- 
sion, ought to be ignored. And of the thought, only the 



98 THE TEACHING OP ENGLISH. 

ethical bearing of it is significant. Poetry is merely a ques- 
tion of morals, and beauty lias no excuse for being. The 
plan of procedure is : believe unyieldingly in a certain philos- 
ophy of life ; take a poem and read that philosophy into it. 
This is the " thought-side " of literature. Our first year has 
been largely an attempt to set up other aims than these. 



i| 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 

PKOFESSOK CHARLES MILLS GAYLEY. 

The teaching force in English in the University of Cali- 
fornia consists of seven men : three instructors, Messrs. Syle, 
Sanford, and Hart ; an assistant professor of English litera- 
ture, Mr. W. D. Armes ; an associate professor of English 
philology, Dr. A. F. Lange ; a professor of rhetoric, Mr. C. 
B. Bradley ; and a professor of the English language and lit- 
erature, who is head of the Department. For the year 1894-5 
the Department offers thirty-one courses. Of these, twenty- 
four, covering seventy-five hours of work (slightly more than 
three hours a week each for half the year), are designed for 
undergraduates, and seven (of two hours a week each) for 
graduates. In 1893-4 there were in the University 1,383 
students, of whom 815, attending the Academic and Technical 
Colleges in Berkeley, fell to a greater or less extent within 
the jurisdiction of the English Department. Including the 
class of 317 Freshmen, there were, during the first term, 
sixty per cent of the students in Berkeley in the English 
classes ; during the year there were about seventy per cent. 
The total enrolment of students in English courses during 
the first term was 873, of whom 397, or forty-eight per cent 
of the students in Berkeley, were taking more than one 
course in English. [At the date of the revision of this arti- 
cle, June, 1895, the University has 1,781 students, to 1,124 
of whom, in the Colleges in Berkeley, the English courses 
are open. Including the Freshman class, which numbers 

99 



100 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

about 400, the total enrolment in the English courses at pres- 
ent amounts to 951.] 

In the consideration of university work in any line, four 
things must be taken into account : the specific preparation 
with which students enter, the equipment and administration 
of the department in question, the organization of studies, 
and the methods of instruction and investigation. 

In the matter of entrance requirements in English the 
University has adopted an increasingly high standard. It 
calls for a high-school course of at least three years, at the 
rate of five hours a week ; and it advocates, and from some 
schools secures, a four years' course. These requirements 
can scarcely be described, as in the fourth article of this 
series, as similar to those of the i^ew England Association. 
The requirements of that Association, so far as they go, are 
similar to those of California ; but they do not go more than 
two-thirds of the way in extent or in stringency. There is 
nothing, to my knowledge, in the English requirements of 
other universities that is equivalent to our course in Greek, 
Norse, and German mythology as illustrated by English 
literature (required of all applicants for admission), or to the 
course in arguments and orations (hitherto, three of Burke's), 
or to the course in English poetry which covers some twenty- 
five of the longer masterpieces. These are additional to the 
usual requirements in essay, drama, and narrative. While 
the preparatory work in literature is generally well done, the 
work in rhetoric and composition is not yet up to the mark. 
Our system of examining and accrediting schools is, how- 
ever, so strict, and the supervision of English teaching in 
the schools so minute, that we look for decided improvement, 
within a reasonable period, in the matter of composition. 
The Department does not content itself with requiring a sat- 
isfactory test-composition of students at matriculation ; for, 
although that would be an easy way of shifting the burden 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. lOl 

from the University to the scliools, it is but a poor substitute 
for the pedagogical assistance due to the schools. With the 
annual application for accrediting in English, each school is 
required to send for inspection samples of compositions and 
other exercises written by pupils of all classes. If these 
samples are satisfactory, the school is visited by one of the 
professors of English, who carefully scrutinizes the work of 
teachers and pupils. The Depai-tnient is conservative in ac- 
crediting ; and English is generally considered to be one of 
the most difficult studies in the curriculum of the schools of 
California. Non-accredited pupils are, of course, subjected 
to the usual entrance examination in literature, rhetoric, and 
composition. As supplementary to personal supervision, 
the professors of English have recently published for the 
guidance of teachers a pamphlet entitled English in the Sec- 
ondarij Schools, outlining tlie preparatory course, indicating 
the proper sequence of studies, and suggesting methods of 
instruction.! 

. With regard to the equipment and administration of the 
department, while the divisions of rhetoric, linguistics, and 
literature and criticism are severally represented by Profes- 
sor Bradley, Professor Lange, and myself, and while each of 
the instructors is held responsible for a certain subject and 
certain sections of students, it is the i:)olicy of the department 
to observe a reasonable Lehrfrelhelt. This it accomplishes, 
first, by maintaining a conservative rotation (say, once in 
three years) of the teachers in charge of courses involving 
drill and routine ; and, secondly, by encouraging each teacher 
of preliminary courses, when once he has his prescribed work 
well in hand, to offer at least one elective higher course. Ac- 

1 Since the policy of issuing departmental monographs on methods of 
secondary instruction is perhaps novel, it may be well to say that teachers 
in the public schools may obtain copies of this pamphlet from the Recorder 
of the University, Berkeley, Cal. Postage, two cents. 



102 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

cordingly, of our instructors, Mr, Syle offers courses in the 
literature of the eighteenth century ; and Mr. Sanford in 
Spenser, and in the romantic movement. That the same man 
should teach the elements of style, or of literary history, or 
should correct themes, year in and year out, is, even though 
texts and methods be varied, pedagogical suicide. The plan 
here described does much to counteract the insensibility, or 
disgust, that frequently attends prolonged indulgence in the 
habit of theme-correcting. We find also that the occasional 
conduct of preliminary courses acts as a tonic upon teachers 
habituated to higher, and graduate, courses. AVhile in all 
cases the specialty is still pursued, the field of information is 
"widened, methods are liberalized, and the zest of teaching' is 
enhanced by the adoption of the principle of LeJirfreiJieit. 

The administration of the Department is republican. 
Each instructor is independent within his sphere of activity. 
When, as in the matter of texts or methods, concerted action 
is necessary, the decision is made by the instructors con- 
cerned, subject to the approval of the head of the Department. 
The advisability of new courses, the scope and form of the 
ann\ial announcement, and matters of general departmental 
policy, are discussed at the appropriate monthly meeting of 
the English faculty. Ordinarily, and primarily, however, the 
Department meets as a Critical Thought Club. The purpose 
of the club is to keep abreast of recent contributions in com- 
parative literature, philology, sesthetics, and educational 
theory. The field of reading is apportioned among the mem- 
bers, and informal reports are had on books and articles 
bearing in any way upon the study of English. 

The organization of studies in a department is perhaps 
a surer index of the purpose of instruction than any care- 
fully formulated statement of aims. The English courses 
are classified as preliminary and advanced. The preliminary 
courses, whether prescribed or elective, are prerequisite to 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 103 

all advanced work. They attempt to furnish (1) the princi- 
ples of style and the practice of written and oral composition ; 
(2) the commonplaces of literary tradition; (3) a synoptic 
view of English literature by the study of the principal 
authors.^ The advanced courses are subdivided in the usual 
way, as primarily for juniors and seniors, and primarily for 
graduates. 

The preliminary courses are announced as types of Eng- 
lish prose style, supplementary reading, practical rhetoric, 
English masterpieces, general history of English literature, 
and argumentation. The first is required, at the rate of four 
hours a week through the year, of all Freshmen in the Aca- 
demic Colleges ; the second (one hour any two consecutive 
terms) of non-classical students in these Colleges. The third 
and the fourth are prescribed in the Colleges of Chemistry and 
Agriculture. All other English courses are elective ; and in 
the Engineering Colleges English is altogether elective. Of 
prescribed preliminary courses, that in English prose style 
aims to acquaint the student, at first hand, with the features 
and elements of effective workmanship in prose-writing, and 
to train him to discern the salient qualities of any well- 
marked prose style presented for his consideration. The 
course is based upon the direct study of selected groups of 
authors. The course of supplementary reading extends, 
as far as time will permit, the acquaintance of the student 
with the Hellenic, Teutonic, or Romance epics, or other 
classics in translation. It serves as an introduction to the 
common and traditional store of literary reference, allusion, 
and imagery, and as a basis for paragraph-writing. The 
best translations of the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Beowulf, the 
Jerusalevi Delivered, Morris's Sigurd the Volsung, etc., are 
studied. These courses, and the course in practical rhet- 
oric for scientific students, in general serve to stimulate con- 

1 Beginning with ISO.'i-O a year's course in Old English will be prelimi- 
nary to all advanced work. 



104 THE TEACHING OP ENGLISH. 

structive effort and practical skill in writing pari passu with 
analytical effort and the acquisition of information. They 
accordingly include first the weekly exercise in paragraph- 
writing, written in the class-room upon some topic not pre- 
viously announced, but involving acquaintance with the 
supplementary reading assigned for the week; and, secondly, 
a carefully supervised series of compositions. Three themes 
have been required each term. The supervision, which is 
personal, extends to methods of using the library, of securing 
material and of taking and arranging notes ; to limitation 
and definition of subject ; to construction of a scheme of 
presentation in advance of the writing, as well as to careful 
criticism of the finished work. The organization and develop- 
ment of these courses is in large measure due to the exertions 
of Professor Bradley, to whom I am indebted for the details of 
this description. It should be added that essays are required 
in connection with all work in the English Department. The 
course in English masterpieces for scientific students, given 
by Mr. Armes, involves the careful reading in class of repre- 
sentative poems and essays of the foremost writers, and sup- 
plementary reading out of class. Of elective preliminary 
courses, that in the general history of English literature is 
the sine qua noii for all higher work. It presents a synop- 
tical view of English literature as the outcome of, and the 
index to, English thought in the course of its development. 
It is accordingly based upon a text-book of English history, 
and the copious reading of authors illustrative of social 
and literary movements. It runs as a three-hour course 
throughout the Sophomore year, and involves the reading 
by each student, and the discussion in class, of some thirty 
masterpieces. The course in argumentation comprises the 
analysis of masterpieces, the preparation of briefs, and the 
delivery of arguments exemplifying the use of the syllogism 
and the exposure of fallacies. It must be preceded by a 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFOKNIA. 105 

course in formal logic, and is introductory to a course in 
forensics. 

The advanced courses for undergraduates are grouped as 
(1) Rhetoric and the theory of criticism : four courses ; (2) 
Linguistics : four courses, including, besides grammar, history, 
and criticism, the comparative study of the Germanic sources 
of English culture, and Germanic philology ; (3) The histor- 
ical and critical study of literature: eleven courses in chrono- 
logical sequence, by («) periods, (b) authors, (c) literary 
movements, (d) the evolution of types. The first of these 
groups is essential to the other two. It involves the differenti- 
ation, for advanced work, of rhetoric into its species (exposi- 
tion, including methods of literary research and interpretation, 
argumentation, narration, etc.), and an introduction to the 
comparative and aesthetic methods. A course in poetics out- 
lines the theory of art, the theory and development of litera- 
ture, the relations of poetry and" prose, the principles of 
versification, and the canons, inductive and deductive, of 
dramatic criticism. It is usually accompanied by lectures 
on the sesthetics of literature. This course is followed by 
the problems of literary criticism : a comparative inquiry 
into the growth, technique, and function of literary types 
other than the drama. The attempt is made to arrive by in- 
duction at the characteristics common to the national varieties 
of a type, and to formulate these in the light of aesthetic 
theory. The resulting laws are applied as canons of criticism 
to English masterpieces of that type. The method has been 
described by a former student in the Century Magazine, Jan- 
uary 1891. The reading and discussions are guided by ques- 
tions, suggestions, and reference lists — part of a manual of 
literary criticism now in press (Ginn & Co., Boston). For 
lack of space the courses in linguistics and literature cannot 
be enumerated. Students making English their principal 
study must include in their elections linguistics, poetics, 



106 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

criticism, and the intensive study of at least one literary 
master and of one literary type or movement. For the 
teacher's certificate linguistics is indispensable. 

The courses primarily for graduates have a twofold aim : 
first, to impart information ; secondly, and principally, to 
encourage original research. This differentiation by purpose 
is necessarily relative. Under the former heading, however, 
falls one of the philological courses, Old Icelandic (Lange). 
Under the latter falls another philological course. First Mod- 
ern English, an investigation into the orthographic, phonetic, 
and syntactical changes of sixteenth century English (Lange), 
and various literary courses which may be classified as aes- 
thetic, comparative, and critical. The course in the history 
of aesthetic theory, which, by the courtesy of the professor 
of philosophy, is at present in my hands, is a study at first 
hand of the principal authorities in aesthetics, and of the liter- 
ary art that chiefly influen-ced them. The course may be said 
to deal with fundamental literary forces. It is given both 
terms and extends through three years. In 1893-4 Plato and 
Aristotle were studied and Plotinus begun. In 1894-5 we 
came down as far as Hegel. Next year we shall make a 
special study of Coleridge and Wordsworth. The courses 
which I have called comparative deal with literary movements. 
They are four in number : the mediaeval spirit as related to 
art, its chief exponents in English literature and its modern 
revivals (Bradley) ; the influence of Germany on English lit- 
erature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Lange) ; 
the development of the English essay (Bradley) ; and prob- 
lems in the growth of English comedy (Gayley). A purely 
critical course, dealing with literary methods, is offered by 
Professor Bradley, in the study of the entire production of 
some author of limited scope. 

To graduate courses of information and of research might 
legitimately be added courses having a third purpose : the en- 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 107 

couragement of literaiy creation.^ We have as yet none such 
in the University of California, unless that denominated special 
study, under which we announce ourselves ready to assist and 
advise competent graduates in approved plans of work, may 
be construed as sufficient for the emergency. Academic schol- 
arship does not look Avith favor upon the attempt to stimulate 
or foster creative production. But, if charily advised, saga- 
ciously circumscribed, and conducted under the personal su- 
pervision of a competent critic, constructive literary effort 
may surely find a place in the curriculum of an exceptional 
graduate, — never, of course, unattended by other study with 
informative or disciplinary purpose in view. There is, now- 
adays, no reason why genius should be untutored, or its early 
productions unkempt. 

With regard to methods of instruction no stereotyped habit 
obtains. In our lower classes the text-book is not always used. 
When used it is treated as a guide, not as a bible. In both 
lower and higher classes, recitations, reports on reading, dis- 
cussion of topics, informal or formal lectures, interpretative 
reading, and personal conference prevail, in such combination 
or with such preference as the instructor may deem wise. 
Students, however, are always put to work on the master- 
pieces themselves. 

With regard to methods of investigation, we believe that 
a certain catholicity of attitude — not inconsistent with alert- 
ness — should be observed. The present anarchy, sometimes 
tyranny, of method is due generally to a deficient organization 
of studies ; and that, in turn, to an incomprehensive view of 
the field. Hence, the uncertainty of aim with which instruc- 
tion in English is frequently reproached. This lack of system 
is, however, indicative only of the fact that literary science is 
in a transitional stage : no longer static, not yet organic, but 
genetic. The study of literature in the sentimental, the for- 

1 Such a course, under tlie title "Literary Composition," is offered for 
1SU5-(J. 



108 THE TEACHING OP ENGLISH. 

mally stylistic, or the second-hand-historical fashion, is out of 
date. Scholars in philology- — narrowed to linguistics — have 
set the new pace by making of their branch a genetic study : 
a study of sources, causes, relations, movements, and effects. 
Professors of literature and criticism are now, as rapidly as 
may be, adapting progressive methods, whether historical or 
aesthetic, to their lines of research. But each is naturally 
liable to urge the method that he favors or thinks that he has 
invented. One, therefore, advocates ethical and religious ex- 
egesis, another sesthetic interpretation, another comparative 
inquiry, another the historical study of style. This is to be 
expected ; and our genetic, and frequently sporadic, stage of 
literary science cannot fulfil its promise until, by elimination 
attrition, and adjustment of results, the way has been pre- 
pared for something organic. Hospitality to ideas and con- 
servative liberality of method will hasten the advent of 
systematic investigation. Even now there are those who 
study the masterpiece, not only in dynamic relation to author 
and type, but also in organic relation to the social and artistic 
movements of which author and type are integral factors. 
The sum of the methods of any literary inquiry in any col- 
lege course should be exhaustive so far as circumstances 
permit. The exigencies of time, training, and material are, 
however, such that due regard, in turn, for historical criti 
cism (linguistic, textual, genetic), technical criticism (distinc- 
tive of the type : its evolution, characteristic, and. function), 
and literary criticisna (ethical, psychological, aesthetic) can 
rarely be observed in the study of > one specimen with one 
class. The method, moreover, adapted to one author, master- 
piece, or type, is not necessarily of universal applicability. 
But the duty of the English Department in the teaching of 
literature is fulfilled if the student, after mastering the prime 
courses, with their appropriate means and ends, has acquired 
a comprehensive view of literary art and science, a rational 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFOIINIA. 101) 

method of study, and a critical sensitiveness to good literature 
— no matter in what intensive spirit it be approached. To 
this end, it is essential that the synthesis of the courses and 
the methods of a department furnish a system. 

AVith these considerations in mind it is evident that the 
attempt to limit the teaching of English literature to "literary 
history, literary aesthetics, the theory and analysis of style, 
versification, and rhetoric, and the necessary philological ap- 
paratus " would, though attractive in its apparent simplicity, 
end in formalism : that is, remand the science to its static 
stage. But the limitation would be impossible. For form 
and thought are as inseparable in literature as in life : the 
expression is inherent in the idea. To appreciate the art of 
Dis Aliter Visum is to understand the ethics of Browning : 
that is, to be a philosopher. Sociological, metaphysical, and 
ethical themes are within the function of the belles-lettrist as 
soon as, emotionalized and clad in aesthetic form, they enter 
the field of letters. Nay, further, the methods of the labora- 
tory, chemical or biological, are within his function as soon as 
their adaptation may assist him to weigh jesthetic values or to 
trace the development of literary organisms. It is, conse- 
quently, unwise to contemn scientific methods, even though in 
the hands of enthusiasts they a})pear to countervail aesthetic 
interpretation and discipline. Monomaniacs are forces in 
periods of transition. It is for those of far gaze and patient 
temper to compute results and perform the synthesis. 

One thing is certain : that, for the determination of critical 
principles and methods, organized effort is necessary. To this 
end I propose the formation of a Society of Comparative 
Literature, the general scope of which will be indicated here- 
after.^ 

1 Professor Gayley's communication on the subject referred to appeared 
in Tlie Dial of August 1, 1894. It is reprinted in the group of communica- 
tions which forms tlie third division of this volume. — [Edr.] 



ENGLISH AT AMHERST COLLEGE. 

PKOFESSOE JOHN F. GENUNG. 

No study in our American colleges is so directly and prac- 
tically important as the study of English; yet none is so 
beset with problems of administration and method. To detail 
all of these would take up too much space here ; I will merely 
indicate some of the leading ones, to the solution of which the 
teachers of English at Amherst have been devoting their at- 
tention during the last dozen years. There is, first of all, the 
question what to do with it as a required study. For the old 
idea seems a sound one, that whatever the predominance of 
elective studies, English, at least English composition, should 
be required of all ; that is, that no possibility should be opened 
for any student to gain his degree without some training in 
the practical use of his mother-tongue. Yet as a required 
study in the midst of electives, English is at a disadvantage ; 
the very fact that it is compulsory weights it with an odium 
which in many colleges makes it the bugbear of the course. 
This ill repute was increased in the old-fashioned college 
course by the makeshift way in which time was grudged out 
to it in the curriculum. Under the name of " rhetoricals," 
English declamations, orations, and essays used to be sand- 
wiched in where some little crevice opened between other 
studies, once a week perhaps, or at some irregular hour sup- 
posably unavailable for anything else. Now every teacher 
knows that a once-a-week study cannot be carried on with 
much profit or interest ; it cannot but be a weariness to stu- 
dent and instructor alike. It finds its way into the hands of 

110 



ENGLISH AT AMHERST COLLEGE. Ill 

incompetent and inexperienced teachers ; it has to rank as the 
Ishmael among the studies. 

It was the conviction of the teachers of English at Amherst 
that such ill repute was by no means a necessary accompani- 
ment of their department. They believed that English, if 
granted a fair chance, could trust to its own intrinsic value 
and interest for survival, as confidently as could any other 
study. I need not here recount the history of their quiet and 
steady work, first to gain a fair meed of time for the various 
branches of their department, then to obtain recognition for it 
as an elective study by the side of other electives, finally to 
retain the proper relation and balance of elective and required 
study. All this came about so naturally as to seem a spon- 
taneous evolution rather than what it actually was, a strenu- 
ous and determined working out of a plan. 

Another problem, especially perplexing on the composition 
side of the study, is the problem what to do with English 
as a mother-tongue, with which the student has been con- 
versant all his life, from which, therefore, the mystery and 
labor of grammar and lexicon are eliminated. The time 
devoted to grinding at these in the classics, or to puzzling 
over intricate mathematical problems, is time gained for study 
and hard drill. What shall be done with a subject that has 
no such study-compelling advantages, a subject, indeed, whose 
highest prizes of grace and spontaneity seem perversely to 
refuse themselves to the student almost in proportion to the 
strenuousness of his labor ? Drill must be furnished, but 
the drill must be wisely directed. And one thing can be 
done. It can be recognized that such seeming is not the 
whole truth ; that beyond the stiff and labored stage in writ- 
ing, as also beyond the dashing and accidentally brilliant 
stage, there is a calm permanence of assured mastery, cor- 
responding to what the runner calls his second wind, wherein 
the writer can do his best and keep it up. Toward this goal 



112 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

of mastery the drill of writing and exercises m language 
should be directed; and this not only by setting the student 
working systematically through the crude and rudimentary 
stage, but by infusing into his task such interest as will give 
it vitality. 

The best term, perhaps, by which to characterize the way 
in which the teachers of English at Amherst have met these 
problems is laboratory work. Whatever the diversities of 
aim and method between the teachers, in this respect they 
are at one : each of their courses is a veritable workshop, 
wherein, by systematized daily drill, details are mastered one 
by one, and that unity of result is obtained which is more for 
practical use than for show. 

The required work in English, which is all under the charge 
of Professor Henry A. Frink, has to do with the English of 
oral expression. It consists of two terms of elocutionary drill, 
or declamation, in Freshman year, and one in Sophomore 
year ; two terms of rhetoric, carried on by means of essays, 
exercises, and lectures, in Freshman year ; and three terms of 
debates, both extemporaneous and prepared, in Senior year. 
This comprises in itself a body of work fully as large as 
obtained in the old days of " rhetoricals " ; and when we 
consider the careful emphasis given to individual drill and 
criticism, in which work the services of five assistants are 
employed, we may well regard it as far beyond the average 
of the old courses in efficiency. 

In the elective study of English, each college year has its 
course characteristic of the year. These courses, in the way 
in which they supplement each other, form a natural sequence ; 
yet they are independent of each other, each professor being 
supreme in his sphere, to plan, carry out, and complete, ac- 
cording to his own ideas — a trio in which the members work 
side by side, in co-operation rather than in subordination. 
The elective English of the Sophomore year, under the 



ENGLISH AT AMHERST COLLEGK. 113 

charge of the writer, centres in written expression, the study 
and practice of rhetoric. The rlietoric thus pursued — as the 
many users of the writer's text-books throughout the country 
need not be reminded — is not tlie mere broadened study of 
gramnuir ; it is a study of the organizing of discourse, from 
the choice of words uj), as a real author must seek to effect it ; 
a determinate study, in however humble way, of literature in 
the making. Two terms of work, based on the text-book and 
on the Handbook of Rhetorical Analysis, are carried on by 
daily recitations and written exercises, these latter, invented 
to illustrate in succession the rhetorical principles under con- 
sideration, being progressive in character and requiring as they 
advance more originative Avork on the part of the student. 
The exercises thus become very nearly eqiiivalent to what in 
other colleges has been successfully introduced under the 
name of " daily themes," with the advantage that these 
themes, while no less vital in subject matter, are progressive 
applications of literary procedures and rules. The course has 
too many interesting and novel features to detail here ; one of 
these, which has proved very profitable and interesting, is the 
setting up in type of man}^ of the students' written produc- 
tions, and the reading and criticism of them in proof. 

The third term is devoted to the writing of essays and 
careful individual criticism of each one in personal interviews. 
Each man in the class presents an essay about once a fort- 
night. By the side of this work there is carried on, as time 
and numbers permit, a course of reading and discussion of the 
leading prose writers. Throughout the year, in connection 
with the rhetorical department, is conducted a voluntary Eng- 
lish seminary, after the inainier of the German universities. 

In the Junior year begin the elective classes of Professor 
Erink. Two hours a week in the first term are devoted to the 
study of logic, and two hours to a progressive and systematic 
course of public speaking. The work of this foundation term 



114 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

takes the form of debates, study and analysis of American and 
British orations, and Shakespearian readings. In a similar 
manner, public speaking is continued through the second 
term, the debates, discussions, and speeches of various kinds 
having to do with the rhetoric of oral expression. Much 
stimulus to these studies under Professor Frink is supplied by 
the numerous prizes offered for proficiency in the work of 
each term. Nor, though the number of men concerned and 
the extent and variety of the work would seem to necessitate 
much that is merely perfunctory, is this work anything like a 
mere routine. The industry and genius of Professor Frink in 
adapting his labors and interests to the personal peculiarities 
of each individual precludes that ; and in the sunshine of such 
friendly relations many a man finds powers awakened that he 
had not suspected in himself, or powers that were running 
wild ordered and steadied. 

With the third term of the Junior year begins, under 
Professor H. Humphrey JSTeill, the study of English literature. 
Here the aim is to do with a good degree of thoroughness 
whatever is done ; hence familiarity with a limited number of 
the great writers is sought, rather than a smattering infor- 
mation about many. The method of work, as in the other 
English studies, is eminently the laboratory method ; and this, 
while based in just proportion on facts and details, is so aimed 
as to get at the spirit of the literature. The opening term of 
the course is devoted, in part through text-books and in part 
through lectures and discussion of the principles of literary 
criticism, to the course of the literature down to the end of 
the sixteenth century ; special attention being given to 
Chaucer, Spenser, Bacon, Milton, and Dryden. Shakespeare 
is reserved for a special term. In the study of these, depend- 
ence is placed not so much on reading about the author as on 
familiarity with the author himself. 

With the beginning of the Senior year the students work 



ENGLISH AT AMHERST COLLEGE. 115 

more independently. The first term is devoted to the prose 
writers of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth 
century ; the second to the poets of the same period. Two 
weeks are given to the study of each author ; and on each 
author certain members of the class read extended and care- 
fully studied essays. These essays, in connection with the 
readings and topics prescribed, are made the basis of the class 
discussions and examinations. In this way men are taught to 
form and test their own opinions. In the third term of Senior 
year (the fourth of the course) the study is Shakespeare. A 
minute exegesis of one or two of the greatest plays is given 
by means of lectures and topics for reading. In addition to 
this, four other plays are studied as a collateral course by the 
class, and made the subject of Avritten examinations. This 
Shakespearian course is open to all, Avhether they have elected 
the three preceding terms or not. 

A special course is also given to a few who, in every class, 
having pursued the course of the three prescribed terms, wish 
to carry their literary studies further. It consists of special 
investigation under the direction of the professor, but with no 
stated recitations. 

Such, in a ver}- meagre outline, is the course of English 
study at Amherst. To pass judgment on it is for others, 
rather than for us who conduct it ; but one remark by way 
of comparison ought perhaps to be made. It does not seem to 
make a great showing of names and subjects by the side of 
the minutely subdivided and specialized courses of some other 
colleges ; but this fact, I am convinced, is no indication of its 
meagreness. The ground is not only broadly traversed, but 
thoroughly, as college courses go ; and the stern weeding out 
of what is merely speculative and unpractical leaves so much 
the more time and energy to devote to the greater literary 
forms, and to learn how close they are to the requirements of 
daily life. 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. 



PROFESSOR FRED N. SCOTT. 



For the collegiate year 1894-95, the University of Michi- 
gan announces twenty-one courses in English and rhetoric. 
Ten are courses in literature, historical or critical ; five are in 
linguistics ; and six are in rhetoric and composition. There 
is the usual division into courses which may and courses 
which must be taken by those who intend to graduate, but 
with us the requirements differ for the different degrees. 
Candidates for the engineering degrees, and for the degree of 
Bachelor of Science in chemistry or biology, are let off with a 
single course in composition. Candidates for the degree of 
Bachelor of Letters must take two courses in composition, 
besides one in literature and one in linguistics. All others 
are required to elect two courses in composition. The work 
is in charge of four men : a professor of English and rhetoric, 
who is head of the department ; a junior professor of English, 
an assistant professor of rhetoric, and an instructor in English 
coinposition. In addition to this, the regular force, there are 
two graduate students who devote a part of their time to 
teaching composition or reading essays. 

The number of students who elected courses in English 
the past year, not allowing for names counted twice, was" 
1,198. To this number should perhaps be added 110 appli- 
cants for work in composition for whom provision could not 
be made. The distribution of the elections was as follows : 
In modern literature, 225 ; in Old and Middle English litera- 
ture, and linguistics, 252 ; in rhetoric and composition, 721. 

116 



ENGLISH AT THE UNiVEKSlTV OF MICHIGAN. 117 

In considering the various courses in English it will be 
convenient to follow the division I have used above ; that is, 
into (1) modern literature, (2) Old and Middle English, and 
linguistics, (3) rhetoric and composition. The first is the 
province of Professor Demmon, who is head of the depart- 
ment ; Professor Hempl is in charge of the second ; and the 
burden of the rhetoric and composition work falls upon the 
shoulders of the instructor (Mr. Dawson), the two assistants, 
and myself. 

In modern literature, the department offers a beginning 
course and three seminary courses, associating with the latter 
ancillary lectures in criticism and history of the drama. The 
beginning course, in charge of Professor Hempl, is a general 
introduction to the subject. It is a three-hour course, running 
through one semester. In this, a text-book is used to furnish 
a historical outline, and very brief quizzes are given upon it. 
Most of the time in class is taken up by the presentation of 
reports by some half-dozen members of the class to whom the 
lesson of the day had previously been assigned for special 
study in the University library. The object of these reports 
is to bring the student into direct contact with the literature, 
and to familiarize him somewhat with critical methods and 
the leading books on the subject. 

The seminary courses are conducted by Professor Demmon, 
and aim to give the student an intimate first-hand acquaint- 
ance with representative masterpieces. To secure admission 
to this advanced work is somewhat difficult, since at least five 
prescribed courses must precede, and there is some sifting 
even of those who are technically qualified. Professor Dem- 
mon offers a seminary in English literature, another in 
American literature, and a Shakespeare seminary. The pro- 
gramme of work is as follows : At the beginning of the sem- 
ester, each member of the class is assigned a masterpiece and 
asked to prepare upon it a comprehensive biographical and 



118 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

critical essay. He is also asked to present at some time dur- 
ing the semester a critique of an essay by a fellow-member. 
As soon as his task is assigned, he begins reading in the sem- 
inary rooms connected with the library, with the assistance 
of references prepared by Professor Demmon. If he is a 
member of the Shakespeare course, he has the opportunity of 
using the McMillan Shakespeare collection of 3,500 volumes. 
When the work is under way, each section of the seminary (a 
section containing about twelve students) meets every week in 
a two-hour session. The first hour is spent in listening to the 
essay and the critique, and the second hour in an extempo- 
raneous discussion of the work in hand. Each member is 
called upon in turn, and says what the spirit moves him to 
say. He makes report upon what he has read, or agrees or 
disagrees with the judgments of the essayist or the critic, or 
advances individual appreciations of the work. When all 
opinions have been aired — and generally some little fencing 
takes place over nice points of criticism — there is usually 
time for a summing-up- of the arguments, and a discussion of a 
special question or two, by the conductor of the seminary. 
Both in the selection of masterpieces and the conduct of the 
classes, the aim is to supply the necessities rather than the 
luxuries of literature. For literary fads and vagaries there is 
neither time nor inclination. The student finds in the semi- 
nary courses the best that English and American literature 
have to offer. If he goes no farther, he has already travelled 
far ; if he continues his studies after leaving the University, 
he will know at least the chief landmarks of the country he is 
to traverse. 

With reference to the work in Old and Middle English, 
Professor Hempl has kindly written out for me the following 
statement : — 

" My work may generally be designated as linguistic ; but 
some of the undergraduate courses are necessarily only lin- 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVEUSITY OF MICHIGAN. 119 

guistic in a simple and practical way, and consider also the 
literary side of what is read. This is particularly true of the 
two courses in Middle English — each twice a week for half a 
year, the second devoted mostly to Chaucer. There is also an 
elementary course in Old English, which, as well as the course 
in Early Middle English, is required of candidates for the 
degree of B.L. 

" Advanced study of Old English is provided for in three 
courses, each half a year : Old English poetry twice a week ; 
phonology and morphology, three times a week; syntax, twice 
a week. 

" In historical English grammar a general survey is made 
of the subject, and the students are given some practice in 
methods of investigation by being required to trace in Eng- 
lish literature the development of various idioms, especially 
svich as are often impugned. 

" In alternate years a course is offered in present-spoken 
English. The students have been set to study their own 
speech and that of those about them, and have gathered 
numerous facts of interest as to American English. But the 
course has been more fruitful in opening their eyes to the 
real state of so-called " standard English," and in removing 
prejudice and establishing a more reasonable basis of judg- 
ment in dealing with matters of speech usage. It also ap- 
pears that a quicker and clearer insight into general linguistic 
facts and principles may be obtained by such a study of one's 
native speech (provided various forms and stages of it be rep- 
resented by members of the class) than can be had from a 
study of foreign languages. Alternating with this course 
from year to year is a course in general phonetics." 

Of the six courses which fall under the division of rhetoric 
and composition, four, each for one semester, have for their 
main object the cultivation of good writing ; though one of 
the four, known as the science of rhetoric, combines with a 



120 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

large amount of practice a small amount of instruction in 
theory. In addition to these, there are two, one for graduates 
and one for undergraduates, which deal with rhetoric in its 
scientific aspects. For the required Freshman work, there is 
provided this year a two-hour course in paragraph-writing 
imder Mr. Dawson and an assistant. As in other large uni- 
versities, this part of the work presents peculiar difficulties. 
The big classes are about as heterogeneous as they well can 
be, most of the students writing crudely, some execrably, and 
only a few as well as could be wished. These differences call 
for differences of treatment, yet it is impossible, with our 
present teaching force, to give adequate attention to individ- 
uals or to distinguish grades of proficiency. The most that 
can be done is to put in a section by themselves the engineer- 
ing students, whose performances in prose are often at the 
outset of a quite distressing character. 

The course in paragraph-writing is followed by a two-hour 
elective course in theme-writing under Mr. Dawson ; and this 
by a three-hour course, conducted by myself. The latter is 
required of all except the engineers and candidates for the 
degree of B.S. in chemistry and biology. It must be preceded 
by a course in psychology or logic, and hence is usually taken 
in the second semester of the Sophomore year or the first sem- 
ester of the Junior year. An advanced course in composition 
completes the list of practical courses. For those who wish 
to supplement practice by theory, there is a course in the 
principles of prose style, and a graduate seminary course in 
which the evolution of rhetoric is traced from Aristotle to 
the present time. 

It will appear, I hope, from this outline, that the work in 
composition is intended, first and foremost, to be practical. 
The aim is not to inspire students to produce pure literature, 
if there be any such thing, or even to help them to acquire a 
beaatiful style. If we can get them first to think straight- 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. 121 

forwardly about subjects in which they are genuinely inter- 
ested, and then, after such fashion as nature has fitted them 
for, to express themselves clearly and connectedly, we have 
done about all we can hope to do. Perhaps the other things 
will then come of themselves. In trying to accomplish these 
ends, I have been accustomed in my own work to aim at three 
essentials : first, continuity and regularity of written exer- 
cises ; second, much writing, much criticism, and much con- 
sultation ; third, adaptation of method to the needs of the 
individual student. To secure the first, the student is made 
to write frequently and at regularly recurring periods, and is 
encouraged to write at set hours regardless of mood or inspi- 
ration. The second point I may be permitted to illustrate by 
saying that I have read and re-read this year something over 
3,000 essays, most of them written by a class of 216 students. 
The third essential seems to me the most important of the 
three. That the instructor should somehow lay hold of the 
student as an individual is, for successful composition work, 
simply indispensable. This was the secret of the older method 
of instruction, such as that of Edward Channing, described by 
the Eev. E. E. Hale in Mij College Days : — 

"You sat down in the recitation-room, and were called man by 
man, or boy by boy, in the order in which you came into the room ; 
you therefore heard his criticism on each of your predecessors. ' Why 
do you write with blue ink on blue paper ? When I was young, we 
wrote with black ink on white paper ; now you write with blue ink on 
blue paper.' 'Hale, you do not mean to say that you think a Grub 
Street hack is the superior of John Milton ? ' " 

I think all teachers of composition will feel that Ned 
Channing's method was good, and will understand very well 
how it happened that Hale and his seatmates " came out with 
at least some mechanical knowledge of the mechanical method 
of handling the English language." But it must be borne in 
mind that in the larger universities the day of small and cosey 



122 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

classes is long past. Now tlie hungry generations tread us 
down. We hardly learn the names and faces of our hundreds 
of students before they break ranks and go their ways, and 
then we must resume our Sisyphsean labors. Is there no way 
in which we can return to the Arcadian methods of those 
early days ? For my part, I think there is a way, and a very 
simple one : Increase the teaching force and the equipment 
to the point where the instructor can again meet his students 
as individuals, and can again have leisure for deliberate con- 
sultation and personal criticism. As Professor Genung has 
well said, the teaching of composition is properly laboratory 
work. If that is true, why should it not be placed on the 
same footing as other laboratory work as regards manning and 
equipment ? I confess that I now and then cast envious eyes 
upon our laboratory of chemistry, with its ten instructors 
and its annual expenditure of ten thousand dollars, and try to 
imagine what might be done in a rhetorical laboratory with an 
equal force and a fraction of the expenditure. Nor is the 
comparison absurd. The amount of business which needs to 
be done in order to secure dexterity in the use of language is 
not less than that which is needed to secure dexterity in the 
manipulation of chemicals. The student in composition needs 
as much personal attention as the student in chemistry. The 
teacher of composition, if he is to do his work without loss of 
time and energy, and if he is to secure the benefit which 
comes from constant variation in methods of instruction, 
needs all the mechanical helps which he can devise. He 
needs, for example, conveniences for the collection, the distri- 
bution, and the preservation of the written work. He needs 
a set of Poole's Index, not in a far-of£ library, but at his 
elbow. He needs a card-catalogue, revised daily, with thou- 
sands of subjects of current interest especially adapted to the 
uses of his class. He needs a mimeograph and a typewriter ; 
possibly he needs a compositor and a printing-press. Above 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. 123 

all (and I do not mean to include these among the mechanical 
aids) he needs, not one or two, but a score, of bright, active, 
enthusiastic young assistants to share his arduous labors with 
him. Under these Utopian conditions — perhaps not wholly 
Utopian after all — the teacher of composition could no longer 
pose as a martyr, and so might miss the sympathy he has 
been so long accustomed to ; but I believe that on the whole 
he would be a happier man, and I am certain that in the end 
he would do a vast deal more of good in the world. 

In running over the list of courses offered, the reader will 
doubtless have noticed that the department does not announce 
many which are exclusively for graduate students. This 
must not be taken to imply that provision for such students 
is not made. As a fact, there is always a considerable body 
who are pursuing advanced work in English. Many go into 
undergraduate courses and there find what is suited to them. 
But for a large proportion special advanced courses are ar- 
ranged, as they are needed, after consultation with the stu- 
dent. These are obviously too variable in character to be 
enumerated here. 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA. 

PKOFESSOK L. A. SHERMAN. 

The study of English as rhetoric and composition, and as 
English literature and philology, is completely differentiated 
in the University of Nebraska. Writing is taught on the 
theory that constant technical practice is necessary, but prac- 
tice in the development and adjustment of meaning in the 
mind as well as in appropriate and effective statement. In 
other vs'ords, not facility with the media of expression, not 
automatism in phrasing merely, but organic, completed com- 
munication, in both matter and manner, is the aim of the 
study. As contributive to iihis end, work in oral composition 
or public speaking — not required, but elected very generally 
by the students at some period in their course — is arranged 
for and emphasized by the Department head. Of fourteen 
hundred students in attendance this year, almost the entire 
number, excepting specials, and including nearly nine hundred 
young men and women in college courses, are under rhetorical 
instruction of some kind. One professor, two instructors, 
and two assistants are exclusively responsible for this work. 
As a division of the general subject and of University 
instruction, this department is known as the Department of 
English. 

The Department of English Literature, on the other 
hand, confines itself to instruction in literature proper, in- 
cluding the earlier as well as the latest forms of develop- 
ment, with recognition of linguistic relations and differences 
between. The work begins in the second year of residence, 

124 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OP NEBRASKA. 125 

with Anglo-Saxon and Early English. In this study there 
are four exercises a week throughout the year. The class is 
drilled daily from the start in writing forms, until, after 
reading fifteen or twenty pages of prose, and practically mas- 
tering the verb-groups and inflections, it is ready to begin 
poetry. The most imaginative parts of the Genesis and the 
Exodus are then used as an introduction, and by the middle 
of December Beowulf is begun. This poem is studied almost 
wholly as literature, and by the end of March has been read 
to the extent of 2000 lines or over. By making the study 
literary and not philologic, there is no difficulty in keeping 
up the enthusiasm of the class, and for three years only one 
student has been dropped from the roll on account of inability 
to carry the work. Erora April to the end of the year the 
class reads Middle English, — generally in Morris's Speclviens, 
with such illustration and appropriation of historical princi- 
ples as can be gained by two months' companion study of 
Lounsbviry's History of the English Language. By this year's 
work the student gets a general idea of the development of 
the literature and language to Chaucer, as also a clear appre- 
ciation of the fundamental forms and modes of sentiment in 
Teutonic poetry. Experience has shown that there is no 
better introduction to the general subject, and many students 
from ovitside groups, even including the scientific, elect the 
study. The enrolment at the beginning of this year's work 
was seventy, necessitating at the outset a division of the 
class. 

The study of Anglo-Saxon and Early English is prescribed 
in but two of the eight groups of undergraduate work. It is 
followed by a general survey of English literary development 
from Chaucer to Tennyson, three exercises a week through 
two semesters. This subject is taken by nearly all the stu- 
dents at some point in the course, being required in six out of 
the eight groups. Here students from the Anglo-Saxon 



126 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

studies of the year preceding, as also from the classical 
and the philosoj)hical courses, are put at work along with men 
from the industrial sections, from the scientific, the agricul- 
tural, and the electrical engineering groups of study. Of the 
hundred and fifty members of a given class thus made up, 
more than two-thirds are without literary traditions or taste 
or training, or interest in pure literature of any sort. The 
theory of the work done with this class is simply that students 
in college have generally as yet no taste for the best liter- 
ature, no prepared capacity to appropriate its aesthetic mean- 
ing, but must have both aroused or enabled in them at the 
start. To do this a month is devoted to inductive exercises 
in discriminating emotional terms and phrases from prosaic, 
and character effects or hints from what are called " signs," 
and in interpreting metres, figures, and force. It is stead- 
fastly believed that the study of literature as literature is 
impossible to minds insensible to the inner differences between 
prose and poetry, and blank to sesthetic challenge or sugges- 
tion. Moreover, experience with the work has not proved the 
existence of minds so blank or insensible as not to yield, 
along with others of better traditions or training, to the influ- 
ence of such first culture, or less completely and readily 
than they. Students from the so-called classical or literary 
groups do not prove superior, either in aptness or preparation, 
after the opening and quickening of the sensibilities, to those 
from the technical courses of study. Last year a University 
Browning Club, conceived and planned wholly from among 
pupils under instruction, was organized and put in operation 
upon a permanent basis. But the young men and women 
projecting it and having it in charge were from the scientific 
rather than the literary side of the class in question. Indeed, 
the success of all later courses in the department is found to 
be largely dependent upon the interest aroused in the first 
month's study. The attention of teachers yet troubled about 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA. 127 

getting their classes interested in literature is invited to the 
results from this manner of opening the year. It must not 
be imagined that those results are in any way due to expert 
teaching, for the tutor in charge is but new to the work, not 
yet experienced in handling college subjects. It is demon- 
strated that, Avith perfected instruction, out of a hundred 
average students fit to carry work above secondary grades, 
practically and positively a full hundred appreciative and even 
enthusiastic readers of best literature can be made. In fact, 
results equal to these highest have been reached already with 
certain classes. Moreover, when a class has learned to read 
literature as literature, with true aesthetic discernment of its 
spiritual quality, it will go forward of its own momentum. 
When it is all agog, even to the last member, over Lycidas or 
the Adonais, teaching becomes merely guidance, suggestion, is 
no longer dogmatic exposition or authority. Each student will 
then do his own thinking, and form — perhaps not unaltera- 
bly, but at least not abnormally — his own literary judg- 
ments. It is neither just nor necessary to allow college credit 
for reading vernacular masterpieces, precisely as for Sophocles 
or Terence, even with the requirement that all notes be 
memorized. The mere reading should be taken for granted, 
as also, — when enabled and attained,- — the higher experi- 
ences from the reading. Credit should not be entered upon 
the books of a college for such higher experiences, but only 
for knowledge gained or culture won at first hand. But on 
the strength of interest aroused beforehand the college pupil 
may be led to do work that will make him a life-long inter- 
preter of sesthetic literature, or at least save him from scepti- 
cism concerning its pretensions. 

The work of this general survey, when fairly begun, con- 
sists in class study of Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Shelley, 
Wordsworth, and Browning. There is accompanying study 
of biographies and general literary history, including evolu- 



128 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

tion of new principles, with systematic library readings, and 
preparation of notes, in a hundred representative authors. 
ISTo further work in this department is prescribed. There 
are elective courses i-n advanced Anglo-Saxon and philology, 
Browning, Tennyson (in conjunction with systematic criti- 
cism), American literature. Old Testament poetry, and theory 
of literary teaching. Shakespeare is made a subject by itself, 
being given in a first-year course on simple principles of 
every-day interpretation, in second-year work of a more ad- 
vanced and systematic character, and finally in graduate semi- 
nary interpretation and research. These courses are perhaps 
the most popular of all, and the elementary or first year 
class will enroll this year a hundred names. There is also 
graduate seminary work through two semesters in the devel- 
opment of literature, given this jea,v in the evolution and 
history of character hints in poetry and fiction, and of certain 
other fundamental modes of imagination. In all there are 
twenty-two semester courses offered by the department, with 
an enrolment this year of something over four hundred and 
fifty names. The work is carried by one professor, one tutor, 
and an assistant. 

The energy of the department has been largely devoted 
for some years to the effort of securing the same definiteness 
and sureness of results in literature for all minds as have 
been reached in other subjects. Such success as has been at- 
tained has been emulated among the high schools of our 
State, and to a degree worthy at least of mention here. Sev- 
eral of the accredited schools have begun, at their own 
instance, to -do the preliminary work of the survey class, and 
so well as to establish their ability to fit for college work in 
literature just as in Greek, mathematics, and the sciences. 
In fact, they have demonstrated that the proper place to open 
the mind to the inspiration of literature is in the secondary 
schools, and not the college. Some fifteen teachers of Eng- 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBKRASKA. 129 

lish in our fifty-five accredited academies and high schools 
will do the preliminary work of our survey course this year, 
and will do it essentially as well as we. We have just ar- 
ranged to recognize the quality of the work by admitting 
their pupils to immediate instruction in literature, by the de- 
vice of an advanced division, upon entrance. Withal, the 
benefit of such training to those students who never go up 
to college, but remain at home consistent readers of the 
best that has been thought and said, is hardly to be estimated. 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVEESITY OP 
PENNSYLVANIA. 

PKOFESSOK FELIX F. SCHELLING. 

There is a well-known story in the Autobiography of 
Benjamin Franklin, in which the author informs us how he 
anticipated the advice of Dr. Johnson for the acquisition of 
" an English style, familiar, but not coarse, and elegant, but 
not ostentatious," by giving " his days and nights to the study 
of Addison." With so sagacious a recognition of the value of 
English as a part of practical education from the founder of 
the University of Pennsylvania, it is not surprising that Eng- 
lish has, from colonial times, held a position of recognized im- 
portance at the University ; although it is only within the last 
decade and a half that that position has been defined, with its 
relations to the other courses of the curriculum. 

The Department of English at the University of Penn- 
sylvania, as at present constituted, is concerned with four 
subjects : (1) composition, (2) English literature, (3) English 
language and philology, and (4) forensics. Of these, (1) and 
(4) are confined to undergraduates, the others extend to grad- 
uate courses. Whether for good or bad, we make compar- 
atively little of forensics, beyond care exercised incidentally 
in reading aloud, and in opportunities offered for declamation 
by students of the lower classes. Elective and voluntary 
courses in speaking and debate follow in Junior year; but the 
chief practice of our students in these subjects is derived from 
the exercises of their literary societies. There is an opinion 
prevalent at the University that it is perhaps well that " elo- 

130 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 131 

cutioii " be not too professionally taught ; but tliat the char- 
acter of the individual should be developed in his utterance 
rather than overwhelmed with the oratorical mannerisms to 
which special teaching sometimes leads. 

In composition work we set before the student one simple 
aim — the plain and unaffected use of his mother tongue ; and 
we believe that the shortest way to facility of expression in 
writing is constant practice, and a practice unaffected and free 
from false conceptions of the purpose of such practice. With 
this in view, every Freshman in the University writes two or 
three themes a week ; Sophomores and Juniors, except those 
hopelessly given over to technology, at least one a week ; 
whilst in Senior year the subject — except as indirectly repre- 
sented in the papers of the seminaries or study-classes in 
literature — remains optional. All of this work is carefully 
superintended by the instructors in charge ; every composition 
is read, — occasionally before the class or a section of it, — 
corrected, annotated, if need be handed back to be rewritten, 
the faults explained with the principles involved, the person- 
ality of the writer studied as far as possible, his abilities 
trained and directed. In the assignment of themes there is 
an endeavor to avoid subjects Avhich can be read up and 
crammed for the occasion, although the student is kept in 
continual touch with good English style by required collateral 
reading. The study of rhetoric is developed out of the read- 
ing and composition work : and, although systematized by ref- 
erence to a text-book, is not studied as a thing apart from 
daily practice. 

The study of English literature, except for a brief esti- 
mate of the historical values of other products, is confined 
entirely to the range of what is known as "■ the literature of 
power J " the products of applied literature being considered 
without our province. English literature forms a part of the 
requirement for entrance to college, and is involved in the read- 



132 THE TEACHING OP ENGLISH. 

ing and instruction of Fresliman year, although there subsid- 
iary to the more immediate claims of the drill in composition. 
In Sophomore year the special study of literature begins, con- 
tinuing until graduation in periods from two to five and six 
hours a week according to the course elected. I omit any 
enumeration of courses, as this may be readily gleaned by the 
curious from the catalogues and bulletins of the University. 

In our method of work we endeavor to follow some such 
course as this : Our first task is to teach the student to observe 
literary phenomena; to have him read, never more, however, 
than he can absorb ; to let him prove by written and oral exer- 
cise that he has read, and also to demand from the first that 
he formulate in words his impressions of his reading. These 
impressions are crude to a degree, and bear to his mature work 
precisely the relation which the antics he performs in the 
gymnasium bear to applied physical activity. But we esteem 
it no small thing to have trained a boy to think on something 
for himself. The authors chosen for these earlier exercises 
are those least distantly removed from the student's modes of 
daily thought. They are modern ; and they are writers in 
prose, as the problem is greatly simplified by the elimination 
of a strange or unusual medium, and the allowances which 
must be made for historic environment. 

When the student has begun to note literary phenomena 
with some degree of ease, we direct his attention to the rela- 
tion subsisting between the various phenomena noted, still 
demanding that he increase his data by constant reading of 
literature and frequent exercises such as those noted above. 
We are now prepared for that orderly exposition of the rela- 
tion of literary phenomena which we call the history of liter- 
ature. This history should proceed, as far as possible, from 
the more familiar to the less familiar ; and for this reason we 
arrange the courses in the history of more recent periods to 
precede such periods as that of Chaucer or that of Shakespeare. 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVEUSITY OP PENNSYLVANIA, 133 

We aim to have such courses deepen the impression of the 
student by a minuter attention to the relations of things, by 
seeking out the beginnings of various modes of literary thought 
and tracing their development in the light of contemporary 
conditions. Nor is this all. We require the student to keep 
himself in daily touch with the writings of those authors that 
form the subject-matter of the lectures, and to submit the 
results of his reading in frequent seminary meetings for 
correction and general discussion among his fellows. Thus 
we arrive at the beginning of Senior year with that training 
in the perception of the qualities and relations of literary pro- 
ducts, and that general knowledge of the course of their de- 
velopment, which alone can render the study of organic and 
aesthetic detail practicable. In Senior year the whole subject 
is approached again from these points of view in the study of 
poetics, the history of criticism and aesthetics, the seminary 
or literary workshop, continuing as in previous years. We 
insist that all talk about theories, aesthetic, philosophical, or 
other, which the student may not investigate for himself by 
actual reference to the authors in question, be banished from 
our work. In conclusion of the iindergraduate work in Eng- 
lish literature, we feel that the study holds a peculiar position 
from its capabilities in developing the taste and artistic dis- 
cernment, its liberalizing influence in broadening the student's 
views of life and man, its enormous weight against utilitarian- 
ism, and its power in giving us, when properly taught, the 
very essence of the now all but dethroned humanities. 

The philology of English holds a recognized and important 
place in the undergraduate courses of the Unversity of Penn- 
sylvania, although we have not seen the necessity of making 
the sight reading of Beotindf a requirement for entrance to 
college, as some of our radical friends would have it. The 
reading and philological study of Old and Middle English, 
especially Chaucer, is offered to undergraduates in the form 



134 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

of elective courses extending through Junior and Senior year, 
whilst a brief practical course in the history of the English 
language is a required study for all Freshmen. Neither in 
literature nor in philology do we set undergraduates to what 
is sometimes called in the English of catalogues " original 
research," preferring to devote these years to the laying of 
such foundation stones as we may, rather than to the amateur- 
ish collection of unimportant literary data or the perfunctory 
compilation of unnecessary indices. 

The graduate courses in English of the University of 
Pennsylvania are confined to literature and philology and 
are conducted wholly apart from the undergraduate work. 
Under philology is included not only the philology of Eng- 
lish, but the intensive study of literary products of Old and 
Middle English, conducted by means of lecture and semi- 
nary, with carefully superintended original investigation on 
the part of the student. In literature too, while the subject 
is treated in lectures and by discussion from the historical as 
well as the organic and aesthetic point of view, it is the duty 
of each student pursuing English as his major subject to de- 
termine upon some definite literary period, movement, or 
writer, for special study and investigation, and later to' choose 
some theme within the range of this special field for his 
thesis. For specific accounts of these courses and their de- 
mands upon the student the reader must again be referred to 
the current Catalogue of the University. The graduate thesis 
in English, as in all other departments of the University, 
must be submitted to the Faculty of Philosophy, and upon 
acceptance may be published. 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVEESITY OF WISCONSIN. 

PROFESSOR DAVID B. FRANKENBURGER. 

The work in English in the University of Wisconsin is 
done in the two Departments, — • Rhetoric and Oratory, and 
English Language and Literature. The combined instructional 
force is two professors, two assistant professors, and three 
instructors, — seven in all. 

For many years the required work in rhetoric and compo- 
sition consisted of one term's work in formal rhetoric, and of 
weekly rhetorical exercises throughout the course. The 
growth of the University has led to concentration. Rhetoric 
is now required twice a week through the Freshman and 
Sophomore years. There are eleven courses in the Department, 
nearly all running longer than one term. In the Freshman 
year the aim is thoroughly to ground the students, by precept 
and by steady practice, in the fundamentals of composition ; 
the emphasis is constantly thrown on rhetoric as an art. 
Analysis of themes, paragraph formation, the study of the 
fundamental qualities of style and of great literary types, 
with much practice in writing both within and without the 
class-ro'om, — such, briefly stated, are the aim and method of 
the Freshman's rhetorical training. Much attention is paid 
to the mechanics of composition. The unevenness of the en- 
trance preparation in English compels this. 

Although rhetoric is now required in our accredited high 
schools, still the preparation is very inadequate. In some of 
the schools the study is merely formal, not looking to the 
production of anything ; usually too much work is required 

135 



136 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

of the instructor, and not seldom the work is assigned to 
those teachers who have little or no special preparation for it ; 
helpful criticism is therefore rare. The course in English 
composition as laid down in the catalogue of the schools is 
seldom carried out even in the letter. 

With our Freshmen, all written work is inspected ; most 
of it is carefully criticised, and much of it is rewritten. We 
try to lighten the burden of criticism somewhat by massing 
the faults, and then treating them before the class. Typically 
defective essays are type-written, reproduced on the mimeo- 
graph, and criticised in the class-room. Some of the faults 
common to beginners arise from ignorance, or carelessness, or 
general inexperience, while some are due to lack of culture 
and of mental training. Persistent criticism may profitably 
be applied to the former group of faults, while a kindly 
patience may often note the disappearance of the latter group. 
The division may not be exact, yet it holds true that some- 
thing may be left to the general development of the student. 
Over-criticism is as bad as under-criticism or no criticism. 
Facility in expression may, at times in the student's course, 
count for more than mere conformity to rhetorical principle. 
Criticism that freezes the currents of invention is always of 
doubtful utilit3^ It is apt to lead to mere perfunctory work, 
just as no criticism leads to such work ; and perfunctory 
work is the bane of the rhetorical class-room. 

In the Sophomore year the essay-writing is continued. 
The application of the principles of the paragraph are more 
strongly insisted upon; the great problems in expression are 
pushed to the front. The writing of essays in description, 
narration, argumentation, and exposition proceeds with the 
study of brief extracts of literary masterpieces. Milton and 
Macaulay, Addison and DeQuincey, Ruskin and Huxley, are 
critically studied for diction, adaptation, and mastery of ma- 
terials. The great webs are pulled just enough apart that the 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. 187 

student may see with what pains and skill the weaving has 
been done. We aim not at the production of literature, but 
in some little degree to arouse and cultivate the literary 
spirit; not that spirit that simply enjoys literature, feeling 
what is good, but the artist spirit that rejoices in creation, in 
the perfect embodiment of an idea, — the critical spirit as 
Matthew Arnold understood the term. At this stage of the 
work, the criticism of essays is largely personal. Many of 
the essays are read before the class. The other influences 
in the University that help the Freshmen and Sophomores to 
the attainment of some degree of proficiency in English com- 
position, I shall speak of later. 

The required work in rhetoric ends with the Sophomore 
year. The advanced courses in rhetoric, as well as the 
courses in elocution, are optional. The principal advanced 
course in rhetoric is given three times a week throughout the 
year, and is open to those students who have completed the 
required work. The method of instruction is by text-book 
and lectures, and by wide auxiliary reading. The aim is to 
cultivate the literary taste. Minto's Manual and Lessing's 
Essays on Criticism .are read by the class. The text-book 
furnishes material for lectures or talks by the students. 
Orations, speeches, and debates are delivered before the class, 
then carefully written out and criticised. Essays of the 
Ereshmen or of the Sophomores are corrected by members of 
this advanced class, who then look over the corrected work 
with the instructor. 

The above work in English is done in the academical 
courses. In the College of Engineering, the Freshmen are 
required to take rhetoric and composition three times a week 
during the year. The work is similar to that required of the 
Freshmen in the literary courses, except that special stress is 
laid upon scientific and technical description and exposition. 
This is further carried out in an elective course in the same De- 



138 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

partments, open only to engineering students, where the train- 
ing is purely practical, intended to aid the student clearly to 
express himself on scientific and professional subjects. 

An article on English at the University of Wisconsin 
would be incomplete that did not give some account of the 
work of the literary societies. They form a great practice 
department in English composition and elocution. The work 
is so certain, and so uniform in quality, that it may be 
looked upon as part, and not an unimportant part either, of 
the students' training. Freshmen and Sophomores, while 
carrying oa the work in English composition in the class-room, 
are listening to or engaging in weekly debates in the society 
halls. There are in all eight general literary societies ; and 
in all of them, I believe, essay writing and oration writing is 
subsidiary to debating. The competition runs high even 
within the societies. The Sophomores of each society hold 
annually a public exhibition ; those who appear are chosen 
for the excellence of their work in the society. The most 
important literary event of the college year, not excepting 
commencement, is the joint debate between two of the several 
literary societies that constitute the Joint Debate League. 
The joint debaters are usually chosen from those who have 
made a good record in the Sophomore public debate. No 
labor or expense is spared in preparation. 

The relation of the Department of Rhetoric and Oratory to 
the other Departments of a college or university is peculiar. 
It should be in close alliance with them ; a sharp insistence 
by all Departments upon correctness in the composition of 
themes and topics, and upon correct pronunciation and correct 
speech in the recitation room, would add greatly to the 
efficiency of the English Department. A graduate's English 
should be the result of all university work ; and by English I 
mean both spoken and written English. 

The Department of English Language and Literature 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. 139 

offers twenty-one courses ; a few of these are given only every 
second year. Anglo-Saxon and Middle English as an intro- 
duction to the historical study of English are required of 
students in the English course. This is followed by an elec- 
tive course in Anglo-Saxon poetry and a survey of Anglo- 
Saxon literature, and this by a course in Beowulf as an 
introduction to the study of Old Germanic life. A general 
course in the history of the English language is given every 
second year. A general survey of English literature is a pre- 
requisite to all other courses in English literature, and is 
required of the Sophomores in the English course. All other 
courses in the Department are elective. 

The method of instruction is scientific. Little attention 
is paid to text-books ; the works under consideration are 
studied, commented upon, and interpreted. Long lines of 
reading are assigned, and the results are embodied in a paper 
which is read and discussed before the class. In the literature 
seminary meeting, once a week for two hours, the general 
principles of literary criticism are expounded and applied. 

The scope of instruction in the Department is sufficiently 
broad. After the general survey required for entrance upon 
the elective courses, the students may study the history of 
literature of the fourteenth century, the literature of the 
Elizabethan period, the literature of the eighteenth century 
with special reference to the social and intellectual life of the 
period, the English romantic mcwement, and the Victorian 
era. There is a group of courses on the drama, beginning 
with the ancient classical drama in translation, going to the 
history of the English drama, and the interpretative readings 
of selected plays of Shakespeare, with themes and discussion. 
Epic poetry is studied in translations of Virgil, Homer, and 
Dante, leading to the great English lyric poets. The devel- 
opment of the novel and the development of English prose 
are each given a place. The English essayists, from Dryden 



140 THE TEACHING OP EKGLISH. 

to the present day, are followed by the English and American 
prose masterpieces, and those by the English literary semi- 
nary on the history and theory of literary criticism ; the sub- 
ject for study in the seminary for the present year is Robert 
Browning. The courses in English literature are, I think, the 
most popular courses in the University. 



ENGLISH AT WELLESLEY COLLEGE. 

PROFESSOR KATHARINE LEE BATES. 

Is it not time that somebody moved a vote of thanks to 
The Dial? Surely the present discussion, with the procession 
of professorial testimonies marshalled by editorials and accom- 
panied by a brisk run of letters, is rendering to teachers of 
English throughout the country a service beyond compute. 
Among the happy results of the discussion must be counted 
this : that more than one lonely stickler for the supremacy, 
even in the class-room, of literature as an art has discovered, 
like Elijah of old, that the faith has no lack of prophets. 
Professor Corson, for instance, has seemed, at times not far 
remote, to stand almost alone in his insistent proclamation 
that the appeal of literature is not exclusively to the intellect, 
but to the threefold spirit. Yet the aim at Cornell cannot 
easily go beyond the purpose at Yale, as voiced by Professor 
Cook in the opening article of the series, to promote ''the 
acquisition of insight and power, taking these terms in the 
broadest sense, so as to include the emotional and aesthetic 
faculties as well as the purely intellectual, the will and the 
moral nature no less than the reason." But Yale, pleading 
for English as ''an unsurpassed aliment of the spiritual life," 
and "a most effective instrument of spiritual discipline," 
hardly outvoices the University of Pennsylvania, valuing the 
study of English literature for " its enormous weight against 
utilitarianism," or of Chicago, claiming that " literary master- 
pieces should be studied chiefly for their beauty." Truly The 
Dial is marking a new hour. America, throwing oft" the 

141 



142 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

tyranny of the German method, in which, nevertheless, her 
leading professors of English have been trained, and facing 
the disapproval of gray-towered Oxford, which, at the present 
writing, has two men enrolled as candidates for its brand-new 
English school, is still the land of the free and the home of 
the brave. But if freedom is to be preserved from anarchy, 
and bravery vindicated from the charge of headlong folly, 
teachers of English have yet to find a general method propor- 
tioned to their aim. Enthusiasts, it is true, decry that soul- 
less substantive, method. "When a teacher begins to cast 
about for a method," writes a member of the English Faculty 
of Chicago, " he is already lost." And yet Thomas the Ehymer 
saw, between the paths to heaven and hell, a path to fairy- 
land. May there not be 

"a bonny road 
That winds about the ferny brae," 

which teachers of literature, who would fain awaken their 
students to the beautiful, may seek for unashamed ? 

Indeed, we need a road. It is very well for the editors 
and contributors of The Dial to claim on behalf of students 
the delights of the " spiritual glow" etherealized beyond the 
dull concern for ''the historical and adventitious," and to 
demand that the professor add to the most gracious gifts of 
nature a culture deep as a well and considerably wider than a 
church-door, — but by what process, after all, shall the essen- 
tial values of literature be impressed ? Let the new day dawn. 
Let the student's lifted head, cleared from all suspicion of an 
ache, be haloed with golden lights. Let the ideal professor 
guide him to the heart of poetry, of humanity, and the divine ; 
but how is such supernal guidance to be effected ? 

"He shall have chariots easier than air, 
That I will have invented; and ne'er think 
He shall pay any ransom; and thyself, 



ENGLISH AT WELLESLEY COLLEGE. 143 

That art the messenger, shalt ride before him 
On a horse cut out of an entire diamond, 
That shall be made to go with golden wheels, 
I know not how yety 

Nothing, then, could be more practically helpful, at this 
stage of the experiment, than these descriptions of English 
courses now pursued in American colleges, especially where 
the professors in charge are committed to the literary aim. 
Upon this accumulated material of experience, theory will 
soon be at work. The Dial has already given judgment in 
favor of dividing English, as a university subject, into the 
science of linguistics and the art of literature. From the 
various reports, however, it would appear that composition 
and rhetoric, elocution, and comparative literature, must also 
be taken into account as candidates for separate departments. 

At Wellesley the subject of elocution stands alone, and we 
have at present — more's the pity — no department of " lit- 
erature at large." Term courses in English translations of 
Homer and Dante, with less extended study of the Cld, the 
Song of Roland, the Nibelungen Lied, and the Volsunga Saga, 
were originally offered in the English Literature Department. 
A few years since, this Department, stricken with humility, 
handed the responsibility on to the professors of Greek and 
German and the Romance tongues, who undertook a composite 
course of English lectures upon the classic and medigeval 
epics. This arrangement proved unwieldy, and fell, like 
Poland, for lack of a central control. The Romance Depart- 
ment offers English courses in Dante and in the French epics 
of the Middle Ages ; but for a comprehensive survey of the 
Aryan literatures in their development and relations, Welles- 
ley has still to wait. 

Anglo-Saxon is taught in the Department of English Lan- 
guage and Rhetoric ; and also by Dr. Helen L. Webster, in 
the Department of Comparative Philology. Three, at least, of 



144 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

our English, faculty are eager to offer Anglo-Saxon courses; 
and this year Wellesley, like Yale, has three under-graduates 
electing Anglo-Saxon. In connection with the testimony from 
various universities — Illinois, for example — as to the dis- 
favor with which English students regard linguistics, and in 
light of the experience of the University of ISTebraska, which 
has succeeded, by emphasizing the literary side of the study, 
in making courses in Anglo-Saxon and Middle English popu- 
lar, questions press for discussion. Is this artful dodging of 
Anglo-Saxon to the discredit of the artful dodger ? Should 
Anglo-Saxon be made a required subject in the English group ? 
Should it be taught with full linguistic severity, as valuable 
mental discipline, or should the teaching be suited to the 
tastes and aims of literary students ? What is the decent 
minimum of philology ? And should the Anglo-Saxon course 
precede or follow the treatment of the more modern litera- 
ture ? 

In the Department of English Literature at Wellesley, no 
critical courses are offered on material prior to 1300 ; and, 
from Langland to Browning, the language is taught solely as 
a means to an end. The forty students electing fourteenth 
century work this year, for instance, will study the East Mid- 
land dialect for the sake of Chaucer's poetry, not the poetry 
for the sake of the dialect. 

The Professor of English Language and Ehetoric, Miss 
Margaret E. Stratton of Oberlin, finds time for some linguis- 
tic work, but the rhetorical side of her department secures 
the lion's share of attention. Professor Scott's longed-for 
Utopia is not located at Wellesley. Frequent themes are re- 
quired of Ereshmen, Sophomores, and Juniors, these classes 
numbering, in the aggregate, about six hundred. Moreover, 
here, as at Stanford and Indiana, classes of conditioned Eresh- 
men are a conspicuous feature of the Rhetoric Department, 
the training of the secondary schools being grievously inade- 



ENGLISH AT WELLP:SLEY COLLEGE. 145 

quate. Miss Hart of Radcliffe, and Miss Weaver, trained in 
England as well as in America, bend their united energies to 
developing in the Freshmen the ability to write clear, correct, 
well-constructed English sentences. To have mastered the 
paragraph is to become, so far as the Rhetoric Department is 
concerned, a Sophomore ; and to proceed, under guidance of 
Miss Willcox, whose preparation was in part received in an 
editorial office, to the structure of the essay. This involves, 
together with the analysis of masterpieces and the making of 
outlines, various studies in the orderly and effective arrange- 
ment of material. Subjects may be drawn from any course 
of study in which the student is interested, and some slight 
opportunity is afforded for experiments in story-telling. With 
the second semester comes, to able students, the chance of 
electing, in place of the regular work, a course in journalism. 
This undertakes the gathering up and editing of news from 
far and near, the condensing and recasting of "copy," the 
writing of book reviews and editorials. A newspaper staff 
is organized, the members rotating in office, and from time to 
time the class is addressed by working journalists. The 
Wellesleij Magazine furnishes an immediate field for such 
youthful activities ; while, for better or worse, the calls from 
newspapers, the Union over, for student reporters of college 
life grow more numerous with every autumn. 

The Junior year brings the course in argumentation, which, 
making as it does for logical thinking, is speedily felt in every 
line of college work. This course, conducted by Mr. George 
P. Baker of Harvard, and similar to the forensic course given 
by him in that university, is described in Professor Wendell's 
foregoing paper. Mr. Baker offers, too, an elective course in 
debate. The crowded Senior elective, however, is the daily 
theme course, conducted by Miss Weaver. The purpose of 
this elective is to quicken observation and give as much prac- 
tice as possible in the sifting and grouping facts of personal 



146 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

experience, and in the clear, concise, and cogent statement of 
whatever there may be under a Senior cap to state. 

These various instructors are united in the persuasion that 
the laws of rhetoric should be assimilated, so far as may be, 
by an informal and almost unconscious process, and that there 
should be no unholy divorce between the English of the pen 
and the English of the lip. They stand for graded and orderly 
advance, for the development of the perceptive and inventive 
powers, as well as of taste and reason, and, in general, for a 
fuller experience and more accurate expression of life. It is 
unfortunate that they are themselves mortal, and have thus 
far been unable to accede to the desire of the other Depart- 
ments that all students whose technical themes and examina- 
tion papers, while good in substance are bad in statement, 
shall be conditioned in English and turned over to the Eheto- 
ric Department for reformation. 

The limits of my space necessitate brief mention of the 
work in English Literature. In this subject there is no re- 
quirement. It is elected this year by more than half the 
undergraduates, while some ten or twelve graduate students 
pursue courses in residence, and others are working at a dis- 
tance by correspondence. The corps of instruction consists, 
in addition to myself, of Miss Vida D. Scudder, associate pro- 
fessor, and three instructors. Miss Jewett, Miss Sherwood, and 
Miss Eastman. Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley are our nursing 
mothers, although Oxford, Florence, and Berlin have some- 
what tempered our original mood. Miss Scudder's especial 
interest is in nineteenth century literature. Miss Jewett's in 
Spenser and in lyric poetry, Miss Sherwood's in the analysis 
of prose, and my own in drama. Miss Eastman is bowed be- 
neath the weight of the introductory course, — such a pre- 
requisite as is given at C^ilifornia and Wisconsin, — presenting 
a bird's-eye view of the field of English literature. This ac- 
complished, the student is advised to elect one of three courses 



ENGLISH AT WELLESLEY COLLEGE. 147 

which have for their peculiar end and aim the cultivation of 
the literary sense. These courses draw their material from 
the pre- Victorian prose, and from the early poetry, epic, and 
lyric, the emphasis in one of the poetical courses being put on 
Spenser, and in the other on Milton. The student's third 
choice is made from a group of courses dealing with the litera- 
ture of various great epochs : a fourteenth century course, a 
Shakespeare course, and nineteenth century courses. But to 
the student who proposes at the outset to specialize in English 
we recommend a different sequence : a course in Anglo-Saxon 
for the Freshman year, followed in turn by the Chaucer course, 
the Shakespeare course, and a course either in Georgian and 
Victorian poetry, or in Victorian prose, with a concluding 
course in the development of English literature. There are 
one-hour lecture courses, alternating, year by year, in Ameri- 
can literature and in poetics. Miss Scudder conducts a semi- 
nary in Wordsworth, or Shelley, or Browning, as the spirit 
moves ; while my own seminary deals with some period of 
the English drama. No text-books are used in any of our 
class-rooms save editions of the masterpieces under considera- 
tion, and save such innocuous pamphlets — outlines of the 
courses, with bibliography — as we individually prepare for 
our own classes. For a young college, Wellesley is exception- 
ally fortunate in her library, and the students of literature and 
history flock to it as flies to honey. Informal addresses by 
one or another member of the force are fortnightly given be- 
fore the students of the department on current topics of liter- 
ary note ; and frequently an unwary poet strays into our 
parlor, or a famous scholar mounts our lecture-platform. The 
literary societies of the college further the aim we have in 
view; and, in general, the responsiveness and earnestness of 
our students are such as often to shame our own inadequacy. 

"The hungry sheep look up and are not fed." 



148 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

We do what we can, but are beset by many puzzles. What is 
the function of the lecture in the teaching of literature ? At 
what point in her career shall the susceptible undergraduate 
encounter the standard critic ? Can a student be conditioned 
on coldness of heart and on native apathy in the presence of 
beauty ? But our chief problem is the crucial one of the 
modern experiment. If, indeed, as was claimed by a con- 
tributor to School and College two or three years ago, the 
constituents of a sound education are character, culture, in- 
sight, and the disciplined working power of the brain, can the 
study of literature be made to promote the final end as effect- 
ively as it certainly subserves the other three ? 



ENGLISH AT THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 



PROFESSOR JAMES W. BRIGHT. 



The courses in English at the Johns Hopkins University- 
are conducted by James W. Bright, professor of English 
philology ; William Hand Browne, professor of English litera- 
ture ; and Herbert Eveleth Greene, collegiate professor of 
English. These courses may be grouped as follows : • — 

(1) Graduate (or university) courses (conducted chiefly 
by Professor Bright). 

Graduate studies leading to the degree of Doctor of Phi- 
losophy occupy a student for three or more years. With Eng- 
lish as his "principal subject " the student will usually elect 
as the two required " subordinate subjects " German and 
French ; or German (or French) and European history (or 
the history of philosophy ; or Latin, Greek, or Sanskrit). 
English, in its turn, may also be elected either as a first or 
as a second " subordinate subject." 

It would be difficult to give a detailed account of what an 
advanced course in English embraces. The lectures and exer- 
cises of no two years, whether successive or separated by an 
interval, have hitherto been the same ; nor could the work of 
any two students, of those who have completed the course, be 
properly regarded as identical except in a somewhat liberal 
sense. But a few general remarks may be made descriptive 
of the scope and purpose of the work and of the methods em- 
ployed in it. 

As to scope, purpose, and method, the plan of the work is 
in accord with that of advanced courses in other scientific and 

■ 149 



150 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

historical subjects. It is assumed that the student is fitted 
by previous training and by disposition of mind to become a 
scholar. He is required to have a reading knowledge of 
German and French, so that no important portion of technical 
apparatus may be unavailable for use at first hand. His more 
technical introduction to English will now be through the 
early forms of the language and its literature. Initial courses 
in Anglo-Saxon and Middle English will prepare him for 
special work in all periods of the language, and after a course 
in Gothic (a course given in the German department each 
year) he will be able to extend his studies into Germanic 
conditions, and thence to pass, with more or less clearness, 
to an apprehension of the ultimate Indo-European affinities 
of English. As a member of the English seminary he will 
take part in prolonged and minute investigation of literary 
epochs, and of significant works of literature. He will re- 
ceive training in the historical and comparative study of both 
the literature and the language, and he will have practice in 
presenting his own judgments and in reporting the results of 
his investigations. 

Concurrently with the work of the seminary there are 
given courses of lectures on philology and on literature. The 
lectures on philology deal technically with the history of Eng- 
lish from its Indo-European origin to its present form ; the 
lectures on literature are designed, on the one hand, to sup- 
plement directly the work of the Seminary (Professor Bright), 
and on the other hand to supply complete treatment of the lit- 
erature from Shakespeare to the present (Professor Browne). 
There is also a recurrence of lectures and conferences on 
Phonetics, the history of verse-forms, syntax, foreign ele- 
ments in English, and allied subjects. Classes are also con- 
ducted in the interpretation of texts, and in textual and 
aesthetic criticism. 

The members of the seminary meet regularly as a Jour- 



ENGLISH AT THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 151 

nal (Uub, for reports on the current joiirnals relating to 
English, for reviews of new books, and for presentation and 
discussion of miscellaneous papers. 

For an account of the advanced course in rhetoric, see 
(3) below. 

The collegiate instruction in English consists of that which 
is given to all undergraduates, and that which is followed by 
those who devote their attention more especially to the modern 
languages (Group vii). Professors Browne and Greene have 
kindly supplied the following accounts of these two depart- 
ments. 

(2) Collegiate Courses : Group vii (conducted chiefly by 
Professor Browne). 

" The more especial instruction in English combines ele- 
mentary philological Avith literary study. The English of 
the first year in this group (called the ' minor course ') con- 
sists, in part, of selections from Early English texts (taken in 
inverse chronological order, beginning with the fourteenth and 
going back to the twelfth century), at once serving as an easy 
prodromus to the study of Anglo-Saxon, and acquainting the 
student with an interesting and instructive part of our litera- 
ture. The instruction supplements the reading of the texts 
by the needful elucidations, historical and other. An equal 
amount of time is also given by this class to the history of 
English literature ; the Morley-Tyler Manual being used as 
the text-book. 

"■ The ' major course ' is taken by students of the third 
year. Eor the current academic year it consists of two hours 
weekly in Anglo-Saxon ; one hour in the early Scottish poets, 
of the fourteenth century to the sixteenth ; one hour in the 
Elizabethan writers (including careful study of one play of 
Shakespeare) diiring the first half-year, and one hour in the 
"writers of the eighteenth century during the second half-year. 

'' Thus it will be seen that the entire course deals with the 



152 THE TEACHIKG OF ENGLISH. 

earliest English, or Anglo-Saxon, the transitional literature 
from Anglo-Saxon to Chaucer, the Scottish literature from the 
time of Chaucer to that of Elizabeth, the Elizabethan and 
Jacobean writers, and the ' classical ' writers of the last 
century." 

(3) Collegiate courses (conducted by Professor Greene). 

'' A course in rhetoric and English composition (three 
hours a week) is prescribed for every student during the first 
year of his connection with the University. Theory is im- 
parted by means of text-books (A. S. Hill's Principles of 
Rhetoric and Genung's Practical Rhetoric), lectures, and dis- 
cussions ; practice is obtained by the writing of a limited 
number of formal essays and of a large number of short 
papers. The instructor keeps office-hours for the purpose of 
criticising privately the formal essays, which are returned to 
the writers for correction. The short papers are in part 
specially prepared, and in part written off-hand in the class- 
room ; they are read and criticised from week to week in the 
presence of the class, and are returned to the writers for such 
correction as may be needed. Each member of the class 
makes a careful study of the style of one prose author (usu- 
ally of a nineteenth century author), and presents the results 
of his study in the form of a series of short papers and one 
formal essay. In this way the principal features of a good 
prose style are impressed upon the mind of every student. 
Toward the end of the year two or three essays and one ar- 
gumentative speech are critically studied in the class-room, 
as models of construction and of style. 

" The course which is described above leads up to a course 
in English literature (three hours a week), which is prescribed 
for every student during the second year of his connection 
with the University. Two hours a week throughout the year 
are given to a careful study of the works of the more impor- 
tant English authors, — as Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, 



ENGLISH AT THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 153 

Milton. Questions that have to do with the form and the 
spirit of the various types of literature are dealt with con- 
cretely as they arise in the course of the study, and only occa- 
sionally by means of a systematic and formal treatment in 
lectures. One hour a week throughout the year is occupied 
by a series of lectures in which the instructor strives to obtain 
unity and perspective by bringing before the student — and 
by inviting him to see, handle, and taste — all the more im- 
portant works in the long history of English literature. A 
shelf of reference-books, which are changed from week to 
week, takes the place of a text-book ; Mr. Stopford Brooke's 
Primer of English Literature is referred to as a syllabus of 
the course. 

" To students in the third year there is offered an elective 
course in English literature (two hours a week), which may 
vary from year to year : e.g., eighteenth century literature, 
first half-year ; nineteenth century literature, second half- 
year. A considerable amount of private reading is expected 
of all students in English literature. Practice in English 
composition is continued during the second and third years ; 
the subjects for essays are drawn from the various courses 
that each student is pursuing, during the second year chiefly 
from English literature, during the third year from other 
courses also, as philosophy, history, and political economy. 

" The courses described above are intended to develope in 
the student such skill in writing English prose and to lead 
him into such acquaintance with English literature, as may 
properly be expected of an educated man ; those who wish to 
make a specialty of English follow the course of study known 
as Group vii, above (2). No undergraduate student, it 
should be said, is permitted to devote to English, or to any 
one subject, the greater part of his time ; nor is he permitted 
to receive the first degree in arts unless he has to his credit 
courses in philosophy, economics, and history, and one 
course requiring laboratory work. 



154 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

" To graduate students there is offered during the present 
year a course in the history and theory of rhetoric. Al- 
though this course does not include practice in writing, it 
is nevertheless a practical course, in that it is designed for 
those who intend to become teachers of rhetoric ; it includes 
an exposition of present methods of teaching rhetoric." 

It is to be added that provision has been made for courses 
of public lectures on literature. The initial course of the 
Percy Turnbull Memorial Lectureship in Poetry was given 
(1890-1) by Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman : '^ The ISTature and 
Elements of Poetry ; " in the second course (1891-2) Profes- 
sor E. C. Jebb, (Cambridge, England), treated "The Growth 
and Influence of Classical Greek Poetry ; " the third course 
(1892-3), on "The Growth and Influence of Latin Poetry," 
was given by Professor R. Y. Tyrrell (University of Dublin) ; 
and the fourth course (1893-4), on Dante, by Professor 
Charles Eliot Norton (Harvard University). 

There are also, annually, public lectures on English litera- 
ture, provided for by the Caroline Donovan Foundation of a 
professorship in English literature. 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVEESITY OF MINNESOTA. 

PROFESSOR GEORGE E. MAC LEAN. 

As The Dial has said in its editorial columns, the State- 
supported institutions of the New West rightly constitute a 
group. Of them in particular it may be said that "they 
stand for experiment, fertility of invention, and the broaden- 
ing of standards." The credit is largely to be given to that 
famous mother. Necessity. 

For example, in the earlier days, these institutions had 
to provide for students who had " small Latine and lesse 
Greeke." Many of the patrons and officials of the public 
schools wished that there should be less Latin and no Greek. 
The modern languages, and more especially English, were put 
in the place of the ancient classics. Hence the large English 
requirements for admission and the four years' college course 
in English. 

Until recently the extended English courses thus devel- 
oped in the State schools and universities were of one type, 
viz., rhetorical, oratorical, and literarj^-historical. The varia- 
tions from this type have been marked in Minnesota. 

In the high schools the older and generic requirements 
of English grammar, rhetoric, and composition and Eng- 
lish literature have become more specific, and are treated in 
accordance with new standards. A series of departmental 
monographs for the guidance of the instruction in these 
subjects is issued in frequent editions of the Manual of the 
High School Board. The study of English and American 
classics is laid out for the four years of the high-school course. 

155 



156 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

The history of English literature is provided for m an accom- 
panying course. Essays upon the books read make a regular 
part of the work. Students in preparation for the University, 
not taking Greek and Latin, are required to add to the above 
mentioned English subjects, not only German or French, but 
also a course in Latin, in the Latin elements of English. 
This requirement of Latin in the English course is a step 
in advance of the practice of other State universities. 

In the University, plans are on foot for the organization, 
under one head, of the English in all the Departments and 
Colleges. Our experience satisfies us that the confederation 
of the different Departments, with the preservation of their 
autonomy, will greatly redound to the interest of the stiident, 
and to the maintenance of culture in connection with the zeal 
of the specialist. 

Confining ourselves to the College of Science, Literature, 
and the Arts, there are at the present moment two distinct 
Departments — that of English Language and Literature, and 
that of Rhetoric and Elocution. During the last lustrum, the 
number of scholars attending the University having risen 
from one thousand to twenty-three hundred, it has not been 
possible to increase the teaching staff proportionately. In 
the Department of English Language and Literature there 
were, during the past year, upwards of eight hundred regis- 
trations, and in the Department of Rhetoric about eight hun- 
dred students have been enrolled the present year. 

In language and literature, the instructors are the Presi- 
dent of the University as lecturer, a professor, an assistant 
professor, and three instructors; in rhetoric, a professor and 
three instructors. 

In the Department of Language and Literature, some sixty 
students annually elect English as the major language of their 
course. A year and two-thirds is devoted to Old (Anglo-Sax- 
on) and Middle English. The plan is to devote the two lower 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OP MINNESOTA. 157 

years to the linguistic training as a foundation for the two 
upper years in literature. The position is taken that not only 
are linguistics and literature not inimical to one another, 
but also that they are necessary and complementary the one 
to the other. The substitution in the long English course, of 
the extended linguistic work in place of the former cursory 
reading of recent authors, has increased the number of stu- 
dents in the course and the respect for it. Its students are 
prepared in due time, not to " chatter about Shelley," but to 
criticise and interpret him intelligently and lovingly. 

The University is unique among institutions of its size 
and character in requiring a short course (the last two terms 
of Sophomore year) in English language and literature of all 
candidates for bachelor's degrees. In this course the elements 
of Old English (Anglo-Saxon) are a constituent part. In the 
Junior year, the morphology of literature is treated. Stress 
is laid upon the historical relations of the literature in the 
study of a great period (generally the Elizabethan) and of sev- 
eral typical authors. In the Senior year the work becomes 
historico-critical with the emphasis upon the critical side. A 
comprehensive critical apparatus, making the circuit from 
the linguistic to the aesthetic, is applied to one of the great 
periods in the nineteenth century. In particular, experiments 
in criticism are carried forward in a senior Seviinar, limited to 
a few honor students. The results of the labors of semi- 
narians are generally prepared for publication. The appre- 
ciation of literature is shown, not only in the enthusiasm of 
the pupils, but in the fact that some of them have devoted 
their lives to the interpretation of literature. 

The Knights of English Learning, a voluntary society aux- 
iliary to the department, is open to graduate students, Seniors, 
and Juniors pursuing the study of English. In this society, 
inspiration is gained through the addresses of invited guests, 
and instruction is broadened by the hearing and discussion of 



158 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH. 

the results of special work by the students. The society has 
sections for specific work, making miniature journal clubs, 
dialect societies, etc. 

In the Graduate Department, a few years ago the work 
consisted chiefly in guiding individuals in research or special 
studies. While this is still done, the increasing attendance 
of graduates now makes it possible to organize them into 
small classes, which are virtually seminaries. There have 
been six such classes during the present year. The stand 
that the Department has taken, that the time has come to 
make Old English available for those of English speech, as 
the natural point of departure for the study of Teutonic, and, 
ultimately, of comparative philology, appears plai^ily in the 
assignment to the English Department, in the graduate Avork 
of the University, of the subjects of Gothic and Old Saxon. 
At this point the work is strengthened by the co-operation of 
the Departments of German, of Scandinavian, and of Romance 
Languages and Literatures. The candidates for second de- 
grees and for the degree of Ph.D. may specialize in linguistic 
or literary subjects as they please. It will be seen that the 
undergraduate work, with its range of electives, permits one 
to make his linguistic or literary line a major, while it com- 
pels him to take the other as a minor. In short the principles 
of the new, misunderstood, and abused " Honour School of 
English Language and Literature at Oxford," have been in 
successful practice here for nearly a decade. 

As regards methods of instruction we are eclectic. At 
some point we endeavor to illustrate by experiment every 
method, ancient and modern. If one term had to be used, 
the " laboratory method " would describe ours. Indeed the 
method has grown to such proportions that we have just been 
equipped Avith a literary laboratory. The English depart- 
ment is housed in an extensive suite of rooms in which are 
offices, seminary rooms, graduate workroom, and recitation 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA. 159 

rooms. These rooms are iu the large new central library 
building just completed. The Departmental Library, espe- 
cially classified to suit the work of the Department, will be 
distributed through these rooms. 

The remainder of this article is a statement, prepared by 
Professor Sanford, of the work done in the large Department 
of Rhetoric and Elocution. 

'< The Avork in rhetoric consists of the required course of 
the Freshman and Sophomore classes, — one hour a week for 
the two years ; and elective courses of four hours a week 
throughout the Junior and Senior years. 

" In the Freshman class the work is largely technical and 
mechanical. Many of our students, and often those who de- 
velope power and taste in English composition, are of foreign 
birth or ancestr}^, and come to the University well prepared in 
mental development, but ignorant, or at least unskilled, in the 
use of the English language. Constant practice in writing, 
constant attention to correct grammatical and rhetorical forms 
in speech, and thorough drill in the text-book, is the work of 
the Freshman year. It may be urged that the high schools 
should do this work. A^ery true, and some of them are doing 
it admirably ; but where, as in Minnesota, so large a propor- 
tion of the population consists of foreigners who are ambi- 
tious and capable, the University must be content to do a part 
of this drill. A boy may lead his class in mathematics and 
Latin and cliemistry, and still be unable to free his tongue 
from the Scandinavian accent, or his written page from for- 
eign idioms. The high schools are year by year doing better 
work, but with a foreign population so intelligent as ours, and 
furnishing so many of our common school teachers, the funda- 
mental work of the University must be a struggle for cor- 
rectness. 

" But, while seeking to discharge the first duty of the de- 
partment of rhetoric, that of teaching students to speak and 



160 THE TEACHINGS OF ENGLISH. 

write the English, language correctly, we do not lose sight 
of the high privilege of cultivating the taste, stimulating a 
spirit of generous criticism, and arousing and directing inde- 
pendent and creative power. Even in the Freshman class, by 
occasional contests, and by sometimes printing the best work, 
students are encouraged to seek diligently the best gifts. As 
a means to this end an option of long and short course is 
offered, the long course requiring extra work, and preparing 
for the oratory and literary criticism of the higher classes. 
As a matter of fact, during the two years that this long 
course has been offered, three-fourths of the Sophomore and 
Freshman classes have chosen it, although it calls for at least 
one-third more work. 

" In the Sophomore year the text-book is still used, but it 
■■*s subordinate to the application of principles in the study of 
authors and in the criticism of the student's own work. To 
secure brevity, for instance, the class is required for five suc- 
cessive weeks to handle different topics effectively upon a 
single page of script. These exercises are corrected and re- 
turned, and the best, and sometimes the poorest, are read with 
the criticism in class. Then they are required to bring in from 
standard authors striking examples of brevity. And so on, 
with unity, beauty, etc. In the third term of the Sophomore 
year, speeches of welcome, toasts, patriotic speeches, and argu- 
mentative orations are required. These are corrected and de- 
livered in class, the student exercising his own invention in 
the selection of subject and occasion. This has been found 
very valuable in stimulating ambition, calling out wit, and in 
preparing students for the demands made by society upon the 
educated. 

'' In the elective courses of the Junior and Senior years, one- 
fourth of the time is given to debate, one-fourth to orations, 
sometimes carefully prepared, and sometimes called for upon 
familiar subjects impromptu, the idea being that an educated 



ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA. IGl 

man should be informed and ready to speak upon all matters 
of general interest. One important feature of the training is 
the helpful criticism given by students to each other, applying 
general principles and noting progress in correcting faults. 
One-half of the time is given to literary criticism. The con- 
stant aim is to cultivate independent thought, not to rehearse 
the ideas of older critics ; to awaken interest in the author, to 
lead the class to perceive in what lies his power, and to find 
out also his limitations. Especial prominence is given to the 
idea that taste and critical skill must come from appreciative 
recognition of excellence, not merely from pointing out faults 
in the work under examination." 



APPENDIX. 



ENGLISH I^ THE SOUTHERN" UNIVERSITIES. 

[Communication to the editors of The Dial.] 
PROFESSOR .JOHN B. HENNEMAK. 

Your series of articles on the study of English in American 
universities, and particularly the general conclusions of your 
summary in the issue of November 1, have proved interesting 
reading to a large constituency. Yet I fear the silence as 
to the work in English in a whole section of our country 
might seem unintentionally misleading. True, the University 
of Virginia has found a place in your list as a Southern insti- 
tution, and all her old students know how to praise warmly 
the work she has done and promises to do for American 
scholarship. But, just in the department of English, there 
have also been other iustitvitions in the South and Southwest 
which established reputed courses, even before Virginia's 
noble university, and have influenced vitally the tendencies 
of thought and culture in the Southern half of the United 
States. 

I shall not here reproduce any of the points em})hasized 
in an article on " The Study of English in the South " written 
for The Sewanee Review, February, 1894. The attempt 
was there made to give the history of the movement. But 
one marked fact was the attention paid to English, by the 
side of Latin, Greek, and other "humanistic" studies, as a 
full and independent course, in many Southern institutions 

163 



164 APPENDIX. 

at very early dates. Randolph-Macon and Richmond Colleges 
in Virginia have had full English courses since 1868. English 
was emphasized at Washington and Lee University from the 
beginnitig of General R. E. Lee's administration, and the 
present incumbent of the English chair in that institution 
has been in position steadily to develope his department since 
1876. Vanderbilt University in Nashville, the University 
cf the South at Sewanee, Tulane University in New Orleans, 
have, from their inception, emphasized and strengthened their 
English courses. Some of the smaller colleges, too, have 
been exceptionally zealous in this field; e.g., William and 
Mary and Hampden-Sidney in Virginia, Davidson in North 
Carolina, and Charleston and Wofford in South Carolina. 
Washington and Lee and Vanderbilt Universities have, more- 
over, developed valuable post-graduate courses in English 
looking to the doctor's degree. The preceding are all cases 
of private corporations. Likewise, many of the State univer- 
sities have shown peculiar sensitiveness to the importance 
of the English instruction, and have emphasized its scope and 
its inspirational and training value. The merit of the courses 
offered in the Universities of Texas, Missouri, Mississippi, 
South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee, I can readily 
instance. 

An interesting and noteworthy feature, in these cases, is 
the attention given to the constant practice in English com- 
position, to criticism, to personal acquaintance with literature, 
and to the emphasis of library needs and library work. The 
historical study of the language goes hand in hand with the 
above, yet serves, I think, in most cases, not as an end in 
itself, but mainly as a means of giving greater power in 
linguistic knowledge and attainment and in literary expres- 
sion. But the greatest gain has been in the fact that more 
attention is paid each year to the entrance requirements; 
preparatory schools are everywhere discarded, independent 



ENGLISH IN THE SOUTHEIIN UNIVEUSITIES. 165 

fitting schools are encouraged in their stead, and the system 
of special accredited schools is generally extending. While 
much is still to be desired in the country localities, the policy 
is working well in towns and cities. Fair training and 
practice in the elements of the mother tongue may thus be 
demanded before entrance, and generally be accepted as 
already possessed. 

With some ground-work to start with, therefore, a course 
of four years in the practical application of the rules of com- 
position and rhetoric, and in the study of literary topics is 
usually added in college. For instance, the University of 
Tennessee maps out for the four full years such a course 
in composition and literary work ; the philology course of 
two years is independent and parallel, for advanced students 
and graduates who desire linguistic training. All work cen- 
tres in the library : the library is the workshop of the English 
classes. Practical composition is attained, not only by con- 
stant theme-work, but also by reports (we make them weekly) 
based upon work done in the library in connection with class 
topics. From our librarian's record for the last two months 
(October and November), 1,351 slips show that this number 
of volumes was taken out over-night from the seminary room 
alone, where all the important books referred to in class 
lectures are temporarily placed for general use. A total of 
1,933 volumes, all told, taken out by the students in only two 
months, apart from the perhaps still larger number of books 
used in the library rooms, when there are fewer than three 
hundred students altogether in attendance in all departments, 
is a fair showing for the general interest and the nature of 
the practical results. 

Most of the Southern institutions, I find, study formal 
literature by topics or periods. Adopting the topical method 
as most clearly defined for all purposes, in our own case, 
we have made the serious study of American literary condi- 



166 APPENDIX. 

tions the subject for investigation for one whole year, just 
because it contains the essence of our nationality, and brings 
the facts and possibilities of American life and authorship 
closer home to the youthful aspirant. Similarly, the study 
of the nineteenth century English writers, both in prose and 
in verse, best bears the impress of the modern consciousness, 
and reproduces most closely existing tendencies and habits 
of thought. The prolonged study of Shakespeare by the 
maturest students is a just recognition of the poet's supreme 
power. 

Necessarily, all the courses in the above-named institu- 
tions (and there are others still) differ among themselves; 
but, nevertheless, one general spirit animates them. They 
cannot pretend to have solved all the difficulties present and 
to have met all the needs required ; but, I think, it is not too 
bold to assert that they are at least doing their share in up- 
building and leavening and spiritualizing the existing condi- 
tions of American life. 



ENGLISH AT A FEENCH UNIVERSITY. 

[Editorial from The Dial, July IG, 1894.] 

The proceedings of the International Congress of Educa- 
tion, held in Chicago last summer, have just been published 
in a carefully edited volume of a thousand pages. The work 
is an almost inexhaustible storehouse of information and 
comment upon most subjects of current educational interest, 
and ought to prove hopeful and stimulating in the highest 
degree to the thousands of teachers into whose hands it will 
come. One department in particular, that devoted to the 
subject of higher education, is noteworthy for the breadth 
and scholarly character of the papers and discussions included. 
There are addresses by Presidents Gilman, Kellogg, Ray- 
mond, Low, Angell, Jordan, and Keane, by Professors Hale, 
Shorey, West, Wilson, and Sproull. Upon some of these ad- 
dresses we commented at the time of the Congress, and are 
glad to see that permanent form has now been given them. 
But our special purpose just now is to direct attention to the 
paper on ^' The Study of English Literature in French Uni- 
versities," prepared for the Congress by M. Chevrillon of the 
Lille Faculte des Lettres, but, owing to some misunderstand- 
ing, not read, and now made public for the first time. 

Few who have not made a special investigation of the 
subject have any idea of the immense achievement of the 
Third French Republic in the reorganization of public instruc- 
tion. To the thinking mind, the work done in this direction 
is greater and more significant than the work of j)olitical or of 
military or of social reorganization. But it is not of a nature 

167 



168 APPENDIX. 

to attract public attention, and. is practically unknown outside 
of France. M. Chevrillon gives us an amusing illustration 
of the attitude of the foreigner in this matter : — 

" I remember, a few years ago, reading an article in the great Eng- 
lish Philistine paper — The Daily Telegraph — in which it was said that 
the great majority of French people thought that Shakespeare was a 
lieutenant of Wellington, who had helped him to win the Battle of 
Waterloo. Now, this was imfortunate, as not less than four plays of 
Shakespeare had just been performed in Paris. But the prejudice un- 
der which the writer in The Daily Telegraph was laboring is perfectly 
natural, when we notice that a nation never knows what its neighbor 
is, but what it was twenty years ago." 

This closing statement is only too true when applied to 
knowledge of any other than the spectacular aspect of life in 
a neighboring country, and it is peculiarly true of so unobtru- 
sive a thing as education. A quarter of a century ago, when 
the French nation had sunk to its lowest level in the degra- 
dation of a sham imperialism, when the frenzied populace was 
shouting '' a Berlin! " and. thought the Prussian capital really 
lay just across the Rhine, the stricture of the English 
journalist might have been taken as approximately true; to- 
day, however seriously meant, it becomes the merest jest. 

Turning now to the specific subject of M. Chevrillon's 
article, we will first reproduce his account of the educational 
position of English in the sixties. 

" Twenty or thirty years ago, French boys and students wrote better 
Latin verse than they do now, but of English literature they knew 
nothing, except the names of Shakespeare, Milton, and Byron. Our 
great arch-critic, M. Sarcey, says that they made fun of Taine at the 
Ecole Normale because he was reading English. Foreign literatures 
were, indeed, supposed to be taught ; but any man who had graduated 
in classics, whether he knew English or not, was supposed to be good 
enough for that kind of work. When he left the Ecole Normale, after 
a course of studies in Plato and Aristotle, he would receive notice that 
he was appointed professor of foreign literatures, and had to begin 



ENGLISH AT A FRENCH UNIVERSITY. 169 

work at once. One of these, I believe, it was who was coini)laining of 
the difficulties of his task. 'What a language,' he said, ' English is to 
pronounce ! They write Boz and they pronounce Dickens.' M. Ernest 
Lavisse, who has seen this generation of professors of English litera- 
ture, was telling me, the other day, the following authentic and typical 
fact : When he was a student at Nancy, at the Faculty of Letters, he 
heard a lecture on the literature of England in the sixteenth century. 
After three-quarters of an hour the professor had exhausted his subject, 
but his time was not up. ' Gentlemen,' he said, jjulling out his watch, 
' we have a quarter of an hour yet. We have time to do Shakespeare.^ " 

Let us contrast the state of affairs thus hinted at with 
the present requirements for a student of English. After 
leaving the Itjcee, he registers Avith one of the faculties, and 
begins to specialize. The licence and the (tgregatiori are the 
two stages of the work now before him. The lycee has given 
him the baccalaureate degree ; the licence (which means two 
years' work) may be taken as fairly equivalent to the degree 
of master ; and the agregation (which means two years or 
more of further work) as standing for the German or Ameri- 
can doctorate. The work of the licence candidate is thus de- 
scribed : — 

" Side by side with the classics, he may take up English or German 
literature, philosophy, history, or classical philology. Every candidate 
for the licence has to write a French essay on French literature, a 
Latin essay on Latin literature. Then, according to the specialty he 
has selected, he writes papers on historical or philosophical subjects, or 
translations from French into English or German, or from English or 
German into French. The viva vocti examination consists, for all can- 
didates, in questions on French, Latin, and Greek literature, and 
extempore translations from the classics, and for those of the candi- 
dates who make French a special subject, in questions on English 
literature, and translations into English and French of the French and 
English authors on the programme. 

The first of the two years required for the licence, the stu- 
dent works at the University. 



170 APPENDIX. 

' ' During this first year, the chief purpose of the English professor is 
not so much to acquaint him with the whole field of English literature 
as to give him an insight into the spirit, the genius, of English litera- 
ture, and to make him feel the artistic element in the great writers. A 
French youth, fresh from his Tacitus, his Racine, and his Voltaire, can- 
not, unless he has great natural talent, understand, or rather, feel at 
once, Carlyle or Tennyson. This is done through minute translation, 
the aim of which is not to acquaint the student with new words or new 
constructions, but to teach him how to find those French forms that 
will best express something of the beauty peculiar to the original Eng- 
lish text. The tendency is thus to develop the artistic sense in the 
student, and to give him a mastery of his own language. At the last 
examination for the licence, at Lille, the English translation being 
Milton's II Penseroso, several candidates were dropped who had un- 
derstood every word and the literal meaning of the text, but it was 
clear from their translations that they had not felt the spirit of Milton's 
poem, or had failed to express it." 

The second year of preparation for the licence is spent in 
absentia, the students being sent to England for twelve 
months. 

" They remain correspondents of the University ; that is to say, 
they have to send papers to the professors of French, Greek, and Latin, 
thus preparing themselves for those general parts of the licence which 
are demanded of all candidates to the degree. With the English pro- 
fessor they of course correspond also, and the main thing that he re- 
quires them to do is to steep themselves in English life — to go to the 
theatres, sermons, public meetings, to see English university life, to 
make English friends, to think in English, to assume English forms of 
habit and prejudices — in short, for one year to throw off the French- 
man, to make themselves Englishmen, and to step out of the natural 
mind and sensibility. After this experience, when they come back to 
France and settle into the old man again, they have become able to look 
at English writers from the English point of view." 

The work of this Wanderjahr is perhaps the most admirable 
feature of the French system. The force with which such 
men as Montesquieii and Voltaire brought English ideals to 
bear upon French thought ivas the consequence of the pro- 



ENGLISH AT A FilENCH UNIVERSITY. 171 

tracted visits of these men to England, and mucli may be 
expected, in the way of a sympathetic comprehension of Eng- 
lish thought, from this yearly sending of picked men from 
the French faculties to England, for the purpose of studying 
English life and literature upon their own soil. 

The work of the agvegation. is essentially the work of 
preparation for a professorship in a government Jijcee. Since 
the number of candidates is much greater than the number of 
places to be filled, comi^etition becomes keen and the tests 
applied are very severe. A new list of authors and works is 
prepared each year, and every candidate for the agregatioii 
has fitted himself for examination on two or more of these 
lists. A specimen programme offered by M. Chevrillon be- 
gins with Piers Ploiriium and ends with RlcJtard Feverel. It 
includes works of Spenser, Greene, Shakespeare, Sir Thomas 
Ih'owne, Pope, Cowper, Burke, Byron, Landor, and Tennyson. 

'' By their fruits ye shall know them." The fruits of this 
system are found in such works, now rapidly multiplying, as 
M. Angelier's volume of twelve hundred pages on the work, 
life, and surroundings of Robert Burns, JVI. Beljame's work 
on English men of letters and their public in the eighteenth 
century, and M. Jusserand's book on English wayfaring life 
in the eighteenth century. M. Chevrillon claims for the study 
of English that it opens for Erench students — 

"a vast field of interesting, often passionating, artistic literature, in- 
stinct with the loftiest ideals, with the deepest human sympathy ; full 
of pathos, of feeling, of life ; full of the sense of the good, of the right- 
eous, of religious earnestness, as ours is full with the sense of the true 
and of the beautiful — one of the most powerful to instill into a young 
mind the germs that will develope upwards. . . . The modern novels of 
England, the pure, idealistic utterances of a Carlyle, of a Tennyson, of 
an Emerson, are among the greatest means of education of the present 
time. Of course, the first thing for a Frenchman — for every man — 
is to remain in contact with his own race ; to read those writers of the 
past that have moulded the soul and mind of his own nation, and those 



172 APPENDIX. 

writers of the present day that discuss the problems which the people 
of his own blood have to solve in order to live on and to transmit to 
their posterity the national inheritance. But when he has done that, 
let him turn to those foreign books in which he finds an ideal, a phi- 
losophy, an sesthetics — views of life widely different from those which 
prevail in the French books of his own time. The national ideal will 
then cease to appear to him as a central one toward which the whole 
universe ought to be moved. On that day when he becomes able to en- 
joy a novel of Eliot as well as a novel of Flaubert — nay, on that day 
when he enjoys the very difference between the two types of novel — 
let him be a business man or a bourgeois, he is a man of broader culture, 
in the true sense of the word, than the scholar who devotes his life to 
the study of the dative case." 

It is the spirit of M. Chevrillon's paper, even more than the 
matter, that makes it noteworthy, and it may not be amiss to 
wish that a little more of this spirit were infused into the 
English instruction given at our own universities. 



A SOCIETY OF COMPAEATIVE LITERATURE. 

PBOFESSOK CHAKLES MILLS UAYLEY. 

Since trustworthy princij^les of literary criticism depend 
upon the substantiation of testhetic theory by scientific in- 
quiry, and since, for lack of systematic effort, the comparative 
investigation of literary types, species, movements, and themes 
is not yet adequately prosecuted, I should like to call the at- 
tention of my fellow-workers in the general field of literature 
to the need of collaboration. No individual can, unaided, 
gather from various literatures the materials necessary for 
an induction to the characteristic of even one literary type. 
The time has come for organization of effort. An association 
should be formed, as proposed by me in The Dial, for the 
comparative investigation of literary growths. In this So- 
ciety of Comparative Literature (or of Literary Evolution) 
each member should devote himself to the study of a given 
type or movement in a literature with which he is specially, 
and at first hand, familiar. Thus, gradually, wherever the 
type or movement has existed, its evolution and characteristics 
may be observed and registered. In time, by systematization 
of results, an induction to the common and therefore essential 
characteristics of the phenomenon, to the laws governing its 
origin, growth, and differentiation, may be made. The history 
of national criticism, and the aesthetics of sporadic critical 
theory, are, of course, interesting subjects of study; but to 
adopt canons of criticism from Boileau, or Vida, or Putten- 
ham, or Sidney, or Corneille, or even Lessing and Aristotle, 
and apply them to types or varieties of type with which these 

173 



174 APPENDIX. 

critics were unacquainted, is to sit in the well in your back- 
yard and study the stars through a smoked glass. To come 
at the laws which govern the drama, for instance, it is not 
sufficient that we modify by generally accepted aesthetic prin- 
ciples the canons of a school of dramatic critics, and then re- 
vise the results in the light of our inductions from the drama 
of the charmed Grseco-Koman-Celto-Teutonic circle in which 
we contentedly expatiate. The specific principles of technical 
(or typical) criticism must be based upon the characteristics 
of the type not only in well-known but in less-known litera- 
tures, among aboriginal as well as civilized peoples, and in all 
stages of its evolution. Arrangements should be made for the 
preparation and publication of scientific monographs on na- 
tional developments of the drama. The comparative formu- 
lation of results would assist us to corroborate or to renovate 
current aesthetic canons of dramatic criticism. So, also, with 
other types — lyric, epic, etc. — and with the evolution of 
literary movements and themes. Of course the labor is 
arduous, and the limit undefined. But the work is not yet 
undertaken by any English or American organization, or by 
any periodical or series of publications in the English lan- 
guage. The members of this Society of Comparative Litera- 
ture must be hewers of wood and drawers of water. Even 
though they cannot hope to see the completion of a temple of 
criticism, they may have the joy of construction : the reward 
of the philologist. Eor several years I have hoped that some 
one else would set this ball a-rolling. If the idea be received 
with favor, I intend to issue a detailed statement of the pur- 
poses and plans of siich an organization. Assistance and 
criticism from those whom the suggestion may interest are 
respectfully solicited. 



THE STUDY 0¥ ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM 
THE STANDPOINT OF THE STUDENT. 

[Communication to the editors of Tlie Dial.] 
Mil. CHAIiLES W. HODELL. 

The readers of The Dial have been much interested in the 
series of articles on the Teaching of English in our large 
Universities. These have given the standpoint of the teacher. 
But that of the student may be of no less interest. And as I 
am just completing my student life in the Department of 
English, after the regular preparatory, college, and graduate 
work, I wish to present a few thoughts from this other side. 

The favored methods, scientific or other, of secondary 
schools do not invariably bear fruit in a thorough culture. 
But wide reading in good books, not necessarily classics, is 
absolutely indispensable in forming a good taste for reading, 
and for exciting an interest in the study of literature ; it is a 
sub-conscious preparation for the conscious activity of the 
matured mind. I say sub-conscious advisedly ; for the young 
student has a direct interest in the good and beautiful in what 
he is reading, and is influenced, whether he knows it or not, by 
his interest ; but once urge him to give conscious articulation 
to his opinions, and to dissect his sentiments, and the charm 
of his reading is decreased. Then his primitive interest 
must be supplanted by something further. The later process 
of studying the isolated fact is good in its time ; but if prem- 
ature, it causes the student to regard his study of literature 
as a de-naturalizing, unbeautifying process, and he will look 
in later years with a horrified remembrance on the classics 
that suffered such a process at the hands of his teachers. 

175 



176 APPENDIX. 

I wish to speak of an objection to the study of literature, 
which, as it meets every student, must be met by the teacher. 
As the student enters his second or third year in college he is 
confronted by lines of elective study. He is called on, to a 
certain extent, to shape the growth of his own mind. He is 
eager to make the best of his college course ; he wishes to 
choose wisely, that he may make the most of himself. Nine 
students out of ten in this situation say to themselves on first 
thought : " I can study literature for myself after leaving col- 
lege ; I must not let work that can be accomplished then stand 
in the way of what must be done now or not at all ; the study 
of literature would be delightful, but it would require a good 
deal of time, and under the circumstances would be an in- 
dulgence." This, I repeat, is the thought of many students 
at the critical moment of their college lives. I must take for 
granted that many readers of The Dial have already answered 
this objection for themselves. Yet it is an objection that the 
teacher must carefully answer to those who enter at all on his 
elective work, — not with an ex-cathedra answer, but the silent, 
satisfactory answer of skilfully conducted work. As the 
Latin and Greek classics were made the instruments of cul- 
ture by the instructors of English youth during the past cen- 
turies, so our English classics, with less intervention of the 
merely technical, can be made the instruments of culture for 
the American youth. These English classics were, primarily, 
the education of James Russell Lowell ; and they must be the 
education of the American Chancers and Miltons and Words- 
worths who will yet come. Let the teacher convince the stu- 
dent of this, as every good teacher of literature does, and he 
will have the choicest students of the college in his elective 
courses. 

The student, in consequence, makes certain requirements 
of his teacher in this department. He expects a living, cul- 
tured personality, not a fact-hopper warranted to grind and 



THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 177 

sift a certain quantum of knowledge in a given period of reci- 
tation hours. The life in the teacher which adds real zest to 
the study is helpful in any line ; personal enthusiasm can 
modify even a proposition in Euclid, though the fact that the 
" sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles " 
may be demonstrated by an automaton. But to the success- 
ful teaching of literature, such life is absolutely indispens- 
able; for the study of literature is more directly a study of 
life in its wide relations, and life only can interpret life. 
The teacher needs natural and manly sentiments and thoughts, 
not technical apparatus ; and these can find origin only in the 
essential character. 

The student also has his opinions as to what the teacher's 
purpose with a student should be. It is an almost universal 
trait of young minds to rebel against being reduced to a means. 
They are still idealists in life ; nothing presents itself to them 
as more worthful than their own life and its prospects. 
Hence, while they are willing to do almost any amount of 
work for their own growth, they are very slow to make of 
themselves stones for the temple of learning. They are stiU 
possessed by the thought that a whole is greater than its 
parts — that the individual life is greater than learning ; they 
are still in what some lament as a state of primitive egoism. 
The successful teacher must adapt himself to this state of the 
young mind. He must bring some real contribution to that 
self -treasured life ; he must make the student feel that he 
considers that life worth working for, and must shape his 
methods and choice of masterpieces to that end. And to do 
this the student must be made to feel that he is a man, or at 
least has the promise of manhood; that his natural sentiments 
are right in general, and need training and direction, rather 
than noxious weeds to be extirpated and replaced by flowers 
transplanted from the teacher's mind. Thus the pursuit of 
his own ambition and his natural interest in good reading 



178 APPENDIX. 

will lead him on to the most serious efforts for a literary 
education. 

Facts leave us, faculties never. No student who has 
reached the junior year doubts this. He has forgotten the 
tables for compound numbers, he is unable to name the figures 
of speech. But he knows that he himself, his essential man- 
hood, in its intellectual and moral as well as its physical self, 
has been developing thews, has gained power to grapple with 
problems of much more importance. He even goes at times 
to the dangerous extreme of nonchalance for fact. In his 
studies, including his study of literature, he will appreciate 
an effort on the part of the teacher to form proper tastes and 
develope powers of doing within him. He will travel labori- 
ously through disjointed facts of literary history and literary 
origins with an inward protest ; but he will eagerly labor for 
the literary taste which he sees can interpret whatever litera- 
ture is presented to it; for he is really anxious to get that 
invaluable secret of which Mr. Edward Dowden speaks — the 
interpretation of one good book, and by it the power over 
many. Hence he will be ready to study that in literature 
which has essential worth, but will be less moved 'by histori- 
cal, technical, or other adventitious interest. He will welcome 
his Shakespeare, but care little for Shakeapeare's antecedents. 
He will care less for origins than for life. And so the great 
treasure for which his teacher will ever be held in grateful 
remembrance will be the sound judgment and sympathetic 
heart so necessary for entrance into the kingdom of intellec- 
tual and moral life. 

I do not wish to be understood as attacking the investiga- 
tion of the historical and adventitious. I simply speak from 
the standpoint of the growing young mind. Once let it arrive 
at its proper maturity, and it will see these things in their 
right relations and work for them accordingly. But let no 
teacher hasten this time unadvisedly. 



EDUCATION AND LITERATUEE. 

[Commuuication to the editors of The Dial.] 
PKOFESSOB HIRAM M. STANLEY. 

In connection with the discussion in The Dial on the 
Teaching of English at American colleges and universities, 
it may not be amiss to emphasize certain tendencies in the 
scope and method of literary education, as bearing on the 
future of literature. Certainly the immediate prospect for 
literature is not bright. Our civilization is daily becoming 
more democratic ; the people draw all activities toward them- 
selves ; and the literary artist is more than ever tempted to 
be untrue to himself, to yield to the popular demand and 
truckle to the average taste. Style, as characteristic creative- 
ness, as the expression of lofty individuality, is neither wanted 
nor appreciated by the great mass of readers. Your thorough- 
going democrat believes in complete equality, material and 
intellectual ; and he who is unlike or peculiar is regarded 
as either foolish or conceited. The great host of self-asser- 
tive, self-satisfied people despise what they cannot understand, 
or jest at it. An illustration in hand is the recent vulgar 
skit, so universal in the newspapers, about President Cleve- 
land's hard lot in being obliged to hear Mr. Gilder read his 
latest poem. Such is the boun/eols temper. It may appre- 
ciate literary cleverness or smartness, but it will flout at 
talent and genius, at all sustained and dignified discourse 
and high poetic sentiment. In the hurry of this eager, un- 
quiet, democratic age, if men read at all, they will read only 
what appeals directly to them at the first glance, what is 

179 



180 APPENDIX. 

short to scrappiness and is startling staccato in expression. 
In brief, the democratization of literature means a childish 
impressionism. 

However, it is folly to lament this tendency, as with the 
pessimists, or, as with Matthew Arnold, to rely hereafter upon 
a "saving remnant." Since literature is not, and is never 
likely to be, as in the past, a product for the few, since the 
kind of writing which the people demand is the kind of writ- 
ing which will be done, the only hope of literature is an 
educated public. I take it, then, that the importance for litera- 
ture itself of the right study of literature in our schools and 
universities can scarcely be overrated. But the results of 
present methods can hardly be regarded as satisfactory. Many 
of our college graduates and most of our high-school gradu- 
ates read little more than that lowest form of literature, the 
newspaper. Not one in a hundred, in consulting his own 
taste, takes up an English classic, reads Milton and Shake- 
speare and Wordsworth simply because he likes them. And 
certainly, for the great majority, school instruction in litera- 
ture results in no marked and permanent uplifting of taste. 
I am far from saying that literary education is a complete 
failure, but I thoroughly believe that it is generally very de- 
fective in spirit and method. 

The chief difficulty arises at bottom from a lack of prac- 
tical realization of the true eiid of education as total process. 
The real object of education may be defined as a preparation 
for that largest, freest, most original development of the mind 
which is the goal of human evolution. And this development 
ever has been, and ever will be, distinctly fivefold : religious, 
moral, philosophic, scientific, and artistic, — each in its own 
way, yet forming an interdependent organism of culture. A 
true education, as a vestibule of life, must contain all these 
forms as co-ordinate ; every scheme of unprofessional educa- 
tion ought to realize these factors, each for its own sake, an 



EDUCATION AND LITERATURE. 181 

ideal Avliicli is yet fur before us. Just now jmrvenu science, 
crass, boorish, and overbearing, as the jxiroenu generally is, 
has got the upper hand in education. Hence we see in literary 
education, as everywhere else, the undue stress laid on the 
scientific method, and literature constantly and doniinantly 
interpreted from the standpoints of antliropology, psychology, 
history, and })hilology. Tt is certainly interesting and useful 
to look at literary art from other standpoints than its own ; 
but for .the educative study of literature the main point of 
view must always be the purely eesthetic. The prime object 
is not to inform the understanding, but to develop the taste, 
to lead the student spontaneously to recognize the best art 
whenever and wherever he finds it, and, what is more, to like 
it, yea, even to love it. Not one educated man in a hundred 
knows good literature when he sees it ; he must rely upon 
some critic, or upon his knowledge as to the fame of the 
author, and straightway he will try to discover the beauties 
he has been taught to expect. But this is not genuine taste ; 
the deeper and real life does not resj)ond, and if emotion 
there be, it is wholly artificial. The student openly applauds 
what he is taught to applaiul, but in secret he reads and 
praises the meretricious and sensational. 

For the formation and development of a genuine individual 
taste the student should be led into direct and unbiased con- 
tact with the best art. He should not even know the author 
of the piece he is reading, but by repeated study should get a 
thoroughly original impression and give expression to it orally 
or in writing before he receives any instruction. The free 
initiative and spontaneous interest must always be led up to 
and Avaited for. I would suggest giving a class a short poem 
for a half-hour's original study, and asking for written answers 
to such questions as, What lines please you most ? Why ? 
What is the strongest part of the poem ? What the weakest ? 
How does it compare with poems previously read? What 



182 APPENDIX. 

would you judge as to tlie author from internal evidence ? 
The student should gradually come to a knowledge of author- 
ship from internal criticism alone, and the author should always 
be subordinated to his works. The best art, which is self-in- 
terpreting and simple in its aesthetic elements, should mainly 
be used. After a measure of taste for the good art is defi- 
nitely formed, examples of poor and bad literature should be 
interspersed for detection and criticism. If this appreciative 
direct study of literature were made the main method. through- 
out the whole course of education, the ground covered would 
not be so great as now, but the results in the improvement of 
taste, and indirectly in the elevation of literature itself, would, 
I think, be far more considerable. 

A subsidiary method which may sometimes be of value in 
sharpening the critical sense with advanced students is to re- 
quire from them actual literary work. However, appreciative- 
ness is by no means vitally connected with executive ability. 
Indeed, the literary critic and the litterateur are often quite 
distinct. To enjoy good writing I no more need to be a writer, 
than to be a musician to enjoy good music, or a preacher to 
enjoy good preaching. The greatest fallacy in the education 
of to-day is the so-called laboratory method, so far as it sup- 
poses that we need to become scientists in order to appreciate 
science, and artists in order to appreciate art. However, 
I cannot enlarge on this point here. 

I conclude that a general revival of high art in our demo- 
cratic civilization is impossible until the general taste be ele- 
vated, and this elevation must be largely attained through 
the improvement in scope and method of artistic education. 
Goethe truly says, " Happy is the man who early in life knows 
what art is ; " and this insight into the real nature of art can 
only be reached and sustained by a constant familiarity with 
the best art during the whole period of education. 



ENGLISH. 



n 



Introduction to Browning. 



By Hiram Corson, LL.D., Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in 
Cornell University. Cloth. 348 pages. Retail price, $1.50. Special price for 
class use. 

THE purpose of this volume is to afford some aid and guidance to 
the study of Robert Browning's Poetry, which, being the most 
complexly subjective of all English poetry, is, for that reason alone, the 
most difficult. And then the poet's favorite art form, the dramatic, or 
rather psychologic, monologue, which is quite original with himself, 
and peculiarly adapted to the constitution of his genius, and to the rev- 
elation of themselves by the several "dramatis personae," presents 
certain structural difficulties, but difficulties which, with an increased 
familiarity, grow less and less. The exposition presented in the Intro- 
duction, of its constitution and skilful management, and the Argu- 
ments given to the several poems included in this volume, will, it is 
hoped, reduce, if not altogether remove, the difficulties of this kind. 
In the same section of the Introduction certain peculiarities of the 
poet's diction, which sometimes give a check to the reader's under- 
standing of a passage, are presented and illustrated. 

The following is the Table of Contents : — 

I. The Spiritual Ebb and Flow exhibited in English Poetry from Chau- 
cer to Tennyson and Browning. II. The Idea of Personality and of Art, 
as an intermediate agency of Personality, as embodied in Browning's 
Poetry. (Read before the Browning Society of London in 1882.) 
III. Browning's Obscurity. IV. Browning's Verse. V. Arguments of 
the Poems. VI. Poems. (Under this head are thirty-three representative 
poems, the Arguments of which are given in the preceding section.) 

We publish a special brocJuo-e containing ?nuch that will be of 
interest to students of Browniiig. It is setit free on application. 



Extract from a letter from 
Robert Browning: Let it remain as 
an assurance to younger poets that after 
fifty years work, unattended by any con- 
spicuous recognition, an over-payment may 
be made, if there is such another munifi- 
cent appreciator as I have been privileged 
to find in Professor Corson ; in which 
case, let them, even if more deserving, be 
tjqually grateful. 



Extract from a letter from Rob- 
ert Browning' to Dr. Furnivall, 

founder of the Brouniing Society of Lon- 
don : If your society had produced 
nothing more than Professor Corson's pa- 
per, I should feel abundantly grateful. 

P. A. March, Prof in Lafayette 
Coll. .' An eloquent and acute booit. i 
hope it may pay as well in money as it 
must in good name. 



78 



ENGLISH. 



Introduction to Shakespeare. 

By Hiram Corson, LL.D., Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature ic; 
Cornell University. Cloth. 400 pages. Retail price, $1.50. Special price for 
class use. 

THIS work indicates to the student some lines of Shakespearean 
thought which will serve to introduce him to the study of the 
Plays as plays. The general introductory chapter is followed by 
chapters on : The Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy, — The Authen- 
ticity of the First Folio, — The Chronology of the Plays, — 
Shakespeare's Verse, — The Latin and Anglo-Saxon Elements of 
Shakespeare's English. The larger portion of the book is devoted 
to commentaries and critical chapters upon Romeo and Juliet, King 
John, Much Ado about Nothing, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Antony and 
Cleopatra. These aim to present the points of view demanded for a 
proper appreciation of Shakespeare's general attitude toward things, 
and his resultant dramatic art, rather than the textual study of the 
plays. The book is also accompanied by examination questions. 

This work is a scholarly and suggestive addition to Shakespeare 
criticism, especially suited, by reason of the author's long experience 
as a teacher, for students' use, and also valuable, by reason of its 
independence of opinion, originality, and learning, to all lovers of 
Shakespeare. 



The Nation : It exemplifies the 
spirit in which Shakespeare should be 
studied, standing squarely against the met- 
aphysical and moralizing perversion, the 
superfine intellectuality, and all the mis- 
conceptions of dramatic art and confusion 
of aesthetic standards which came to us 
from Germany. Altogether, so excellent 
a volume of Shakespeare criticism has not 
been put forth by an American scholar in 
many a day. Teachers and students both 
may profit by it as a model of how to learn 
in this particular subject. 

The Tablet, London : It is delightful 
reading. While purporting to be merely a 
hand-book for students, it proves to be a 
commentary of a very high order. It is in 
handy form and well printed and can be 
heartily recommended to all students of 
the world-poet. 



Prof. T. W. Hunt, Princeton, in 
Mod. Lang. Notes ; Its two cardinal merits 
are suggestiveness and intensity. It holds 
the reader to the page and makes him 
ponder as he reads. Had we space we 
could collate not a few paragraphs, so 
potent and trenchant as to be worth the 
remembrance of every student of dramatic 
art. The style is stimulating and con- 
firms the principle that literary criticism, 
at its best, is creative and vital. Prof. 
Corson deals with Shakespeare as a 
student should deal with genius. This 
method is catholic, sympathetic and 
psychologic rather than verbal and micro- 
scopic. Less " peeping and botanizing " 
and a more profound iniook and a more 
spacious outlook is what is needed in 
Shakespearian study, and it is a need that 
Professor Corson has done much to meet. 



82 ENGLISH. 

The Literary Study of the Bible, 

An Account of the Leading Forms of Literature represented in the Sacred Writings. 
Intended for English Readers. By Richard G. Moulton. University Ex- 
tension Professor of English Literature in the University of Chicago ; late Ex- 
tension Lecturer in Literature to Cambridge University (England), arid to the 
London and the American Societies for the Extension of University Teaching. 
Author of " Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist," " The Ancient Classical Drama,'' 
etc. Cloth. 535 pages. Retail price, $2.00. 

THIS work is founded on the experience of University Extension 
Courses delivered during three years in various parts of England 
and America, in connection with universities or with churches of all 
denominations. 

It deals with the Bible as literature, without reference to theological 
or distinctively religious matters on the one hand, or on the other hand 
to the historical analysis which has come to be known as " the higher 
criticism." With a view to the general reader it endeavors to bring 
out the literary interest of Scripture, so often obscured by reading in 
verses or short fragments. For the professed student of literature it 
has the further purpose of discussing methodically such literary forms 
as epic, lyric, dramatic, etc., so far as they appear in one of the 
world's great literatures. It assumes that the English Bible is a 
supreme classic, the thorough study of which must form a part of all 
liberal education. 

Contents : 

Introduction : The Book of Job, and the various kinds of literary 
interest represented by it. Book I : First Principles of Literary classi- 
fication illustrated from Sacred Literature. Book II : Lyric Poetry of 
the Bible. Book III : Biblical History and Epic. Book IV : The 
Philosophy of the Bible, or Wisdom Literature. Book V : Biblical 
Literature of Prophecy. Book VI : Biblical Literature of Rhetoric. 
Appendix : Tables intended as a manual for Bible reading from the 
literary point of view. \Ready soon. 

History and Literature in Grammar Grades. 

By J. H. Phillips, Superintendent Public Schools, Birmingham, Ala. Paper. 
19 pages. Retail price, 15 cents. (Monographs on Education Series.) 



D 



ISCUSSES past and present methods of teaching these branches, 
and suggests improvements. 



ENGLISH LANG UA GE. 



Hyde's Lessons in English, Book I. For the lower grades. Contains exercises 
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D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS, 

BOSTON. NEW YORK. CHICAGO. 



ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Hawthorne and Lemmon's American Literature. A manual for high schools 

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George's Burke's American Orations. Cloth. 65 cts. 

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Corson's Introduction to the Study of Milton, in press. 
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